


Stand By Me

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Other: See Story Notes, Post-Apocalypse, SPNDystopiaBang 2018, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Slow Dancing, Strip Tease, Touch-Starved Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 14:02:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14875128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: Dean Winchester has been alone for a long, long time.When he and Castiel happen to find each other - a couple of survivors in a world that’s been all but wiped clean - Dean’s looking for his brother; Castiel is looking for something to look for. They stick together, because neither of them much wants to be alone. They hate each other at first, of course. Dean hates Castiel for being weird and quiet and ironic and antagonistic and proud. Castiel hates Dean for being blunt and reckless and coarse, for drinking, for refusing to talk about how he feels and just pretending everything is fine. Most of all, they hate themselves and each other just for being alive. What right do they have to be alive? No one else seems to be.But against his own will, Dean starts to notice things about Castiel that he likes. Starts to hope that Castiel might like him, too. And together, they start to fight for a world where they're both alive - and that's a good thing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: there is one mention of suicidality in the fic, some alcohol use, and one scene early on which contains drunkenness. Please take care! If you would like to know more about the exact nature of this content, please feel free to message me on [tumblr](http://whelvenwings.tumblr.com) or leave me a comment here, and I'll reply.
> 
> \-------------------------------------
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to my fantastic and awesome partner in this challenge, [Threshie](http://threshasketch.tumblr.com), who has been so fun to work with!!!! Threshie, your support of this fic, your general coolness, and most of all your awesome art skills made this whole experience so good. Thank you!! <3

 

The house was frightening, because it wasn’t.

Everything was in its place. Through the half-drawn blinds, yellow light lazed in and rested dreamily on bookshelves, on side-tables, on couches with soft, clean cushions. Little trinkets and pieces of clutter lay on the kitchen counter. The TV was a widescreen; the carpet was cream-coloured and spotless. Nothing was amiss. The rooms were wide and spacious and nicely-designed, in a generic and suburban kind of way. There was a soft, friendly silence; the house as a whole was normal, unthreatening.

Through it, Dean Winchester moved like a dark and bloodied animal.

Warily, wide-eyed and grit-teethed, straining for hush, he made his way around the place. Careful, deliberate steps took him through the lounge, into the kitchen. He eyed the receipts left on the coffee table, and the drawings taped to the fridge. Systematically, silently, he checked every room - inside every closet, behind every curtain, upstairs and downstairs and then again. A double sweep, done with one hand always clenched firmly, assuredly, on a makeshift blade that shone with honeyed sharpness in the dusky gloom. Every breath he took was a little incision in the house’s quietness; he tried to keep those wounds shallow as he strained his ears for the sounds of a movement that wasn’t his own.

Dean Winchester had learned to be careful. It was unfair that he was alive; he wasn’t going to push his odds with recklessness.

It was only after he’d determined that the house was empty, absolutely and completely, except for himself, that he allowed himself to set down his weapon and unsling the pack on his back. It was with practised hands that he withdrew a neatly-looped flex of wire with tin cans attached to it from the top of the pack, and began to string it across the hallway of the house - carefully, so carefully, making sure the pebbles inside the cans didn’t rattle so much as once. No noise.

He used another set of cans on the stairs, and a third just outside the door of the room he’d judged on his sweeps to be the safest in the place - the one upstairs at the front, with a window that overlooked the porch, providing the possibility of a hasty exit down to the ground if need be. Two exits were always better than one, but upstairs was always safer than downstairs.

When the cans were in place, he pulled his pack and his weapon into the room he’d chosen and closed the door behind him, and let out a sigh as he pressed his forehead to the door.

He stayed like that for some time.

Behind him, the room was nothing special - just a child’s bedroom, nothing more. Green covers on the bed, green walls; to one side, a mirror with cartoonish frogs and flowers decorating the frame. Toys were scattered across the floor. A wardrobe to one side was filled with clothes for a tiny person who did not live there anymore.

When Dean turned around, he caught sight of himself in the mirror; his face was set into grim lines, the shadows clutching at his jawbone and cheekbones, hollowing him out. He didn’t jump, though, like he once might have done, to see his reflection move as he turned - didn’t consider, even for a moment, that someone else might be in here with him.

He’d long since given up expecting to see anyone who moved with such a conscious, alive kind of deliberation, other than his own reflection.

He approached the glass, his big dirty boots leaving a track across the kid’s soft carpet. When a little needle of guilt pressed into him, he pushed its sharpness away. The kid wasn’t here to care, and neither were its parents. Nor was anyone, at all.

He hesitated, foot in the air - and then made sure not to tread on any of the toys, though.

“Well, hey,” he said to the mirror when he reached it, and smiled at himself. “How’s it’s going, handsome?”

He winked at himself, and turned his head to the side to check on the small cut that marked his right temple, just beside the hairline.

“Well, then. No blood,” he said distractedly, looking it over, touching it roughly with the fingertips of one hand. “That’s good. Good job, average human power to heal.”

His skin was ingrained with dirt; his hair looked to have gone past the point of greasiness and now had the strange, oily cleanness of hair that had been unwashed for months. He was clean-shaven, though with a little shadow coming in as the day drew to a close. In his eyes, there was a kind of hollowness. He only saw it when he stared at himself for too long. He blinked.

“Come on,” he said to himself. He took off his coat, a leather jacket with scratches criss-crossing and overlapping all down the sleeves and across the back, a nasty thing that smelled of blood and guts - at least, to a nose that hadn’t already smelled far, far too much of death, and was long-since used to it.

In only his stained grey t-shirt, he flexed his muscles. Gave himself a cheeky grin. Tried not to see the dullness that still blanketed his eyes like a film of dust over the surface of water.

“Still lookin’ good at the end of the world, huh?” he asked himself. “Mmm. What’s her secret?” He winked, flicked back imaginary hair. “Wouldn’t YOU like to know.” He said it smoothly, in a higher voice than usual, mimicking a woman speaking - and then shook his head, and snorted. “God - what was that even from? Was that a hair thing? Pantene? No wait… Dove. Dove?”

A moment passed, and then Dean’s expression closed.

He couldn’t remember.

“It’s the little fucking things,” he said to himself, softly. “Ain’t it just the littlest of fucking things.”

When he swallowed, it was loud in the silent room.

“And now I’m gonna stop talking to you, because we both know it’s gonna get weird and I’m gonna lose my mind if I keep doing it. If I haven’t already. Hey, who would know or care, though, right?” The last words were jaunty, all fake upbeat humour.

He shook his head abruptly, and turned away from the mirror.

The green walls and green bed-covers and little tiny toys were too sweet, too lovely. And the room was too big, somehow. Every room he was in always felt so big. Loneliness was in his chest, a soreness to his skin, a constant wordless and physical press. Every day that he spent alone, it worsened. Every night that he spent alone, it worsened faster.

Sitting down on the bed, he picked up his blade and checked it over. The axe-like handle of it was bone, he thought, though he wasn’t sure - it was the right shape and it was strong, and that was enough, a long and ugly off-white thing that Dean touched without horror. The sharp edge itself was dark as obsidian. Dean tested it for keenness, seemed satisfied, and placed it down beside him on the floor.

For a while he’d tried keeping it in his hand every night, on the bed with him - and ended up with a gash in his thigh after a nightmare woke him too violently and had him thrashing at the air; it had taken weeks to heal, weeks of travelling with the scent of his own blood as a constant and dangerous companion.

Now, he set the blade down beside him. He trailed his hand off the bed as he lay down, so that his fingers caressed the handle of the weapon - light as a lover’s touch.

He stared up at the ceiling. After some time, he closed his eyes, and appeared to sleep. His eyelids twitched and his fingers jerked as night pulled the light out of the sky, and left the world in darkness.

Dreaming, Dean saw the people he missed. He watched them in soft greyscale, their silhouettes blurred.

“Two years,” he tried to say to them, in a voice that wasn’t loud enough for them to hear. They faced away. “Two years. I’ve been looking for two years. Where the hell are you?”

They turned around, and their faces were the faces of the dead.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The banner at the top of this chapter is, of course, by the incredibly talented [Threshie](http://threshasketch.tumblr.com)! You can find it [here](http://threshasketch.tumblr.com/post/174652474573) on Tumblr <3


	2. Chapter 2

Dean was woken by the sound of a dead man screaming.

His hand was gripping the handle of the blade before his eyes opened. His mind snapped awake - no grogginess, not after so much time to get used to sudden wake-ups where alertness could make the difference between staying alive, and - the other thing. 

The sound wasn’t from too nearby - not inside the house, Dean could tell, but coming from in front of it. Far, but not far off  _ enough _ . The cries were hoarse and piercing as a king crow’s call. A sound that loud was bound to attract attention, and before he knew it Dean could find himself trapped in a horde.

Again.

He moved to the window and looked out, but couldn’t see any signs of movement - though the window’s view was limited, the front yard too large to see the street properly. Pressing his lips together, Dean let out a breath through his nose. Was it worth going outside and risking a fight, just to still this one scream? It might stop on its own; he might be putting himself in danger for no reason out there - but all the same, a  _ horde _ . It was always a possibility, and not a welcome one. Dean chewed his lip.

He wasn’t ready for a repeat of last year’s incident with the hacksaw and the garbage truck. Tightening his grip on the blade, he swung out of bed and moved towards the door, grabbing his jacket with practised swiftness and pulling it on quickly. He stepped past his own can traps, moved warily down the stairs - taking nothing for granted, least of all his safety in a house that had been standing empty and unlocked all night - and crossed the hall, and walked outside the front door.

Walking across the front yard and out past the fence, there was a humming in Dean’s head. He felt hot, red-blooded, brutal - the blade in his hand and morning air in his lungs. Spit in his mouth. Hunger in his stomach. Life in his eyes. Human, living, and ready to defend himself.

The street was relatively well-preserved. It was the reason Dean had chosen to stay the night here in the first place. There were a couple of the usual pile-ups of cars, and the road had cracked open several doors down and left a deep trench, but none of the houses were burned or bloodied on the outside, and there was no scent of gas. The morning was only just breaking, sun on the horizon chipping through the dark like a tooth through gum. There was a half-lit, yellowy dampness to the air, mist hanging wetly like saliva.

Dean hefted his blade in his hand, and stepped purposefully out from under the porch, heading for the source of the screaming. His stride was still careful and alert as he moved into open space, but his shoulders were squared and he relaxed his body, better prepared that way for a swift reaction to a sudden threat - no startled jump or reflexive, tense mistake. 

The wailing only grew louder as he walked. Shrieking like this was unusual - and unnerving, though Dean hushed the instinctive part of his brain that wanted, very insistently, to run. Mostly, the sounds Dean had heard over the years were guttural and low, roars and sick grunts - but every now and then, one of them had its vocal chords damaged just enough to make this noise, the pig squeal.

One of  _ them. _

He rounded the back of a big four-by-four, and it came into view. 

Facing away from Dean, its head was lolling to one side like a child’s in sleep, neck twisted at an ugly angle. Its skin was grey, and shiny with rot. Its movements were odd, shambolic, jerky. Its clothes were stained and broken, and its arms were reaching forward as it screamed - the sound worse up close, wordless, high-pitched, on and on. It shuffle-walked, one bent and broken leg being dragged behind the other, making slow and foul progress between a couple of cars.

It was the dead man.

Dean strode towards it, swinging his blade, testing its familiar weight. He pressed his lips together, trying to figure out the best angle to attack from. He’d probably get the cleanest strike if he waited until the creature was between the hoods of the two cars, so that he could get a good swing on his blade and slice right through those vocal chords. The noise was the priority, here - stopping it. He could stab the brain after stopping the noise, when he could hear himself think.

He stayed absolutely still for a couple of moments, careful not to make any sound that could attract the dead man’s attention and bring it back towards him - and then, when it was past the bodies of the cars and loping sickly between the hoods, Dean moved. 

With quick, assured strides, he approached the dead man from behind. He swung his blade up, and brought it round to strike into the neck. His eyes were hard as steel, his mouth a hard press of concentration.

His blade sliced through the old flesh and softening bone easily; Dean’s arms barely felt the strain and the cut was clean. The screaming stopped abruptly. The head fell. No blood, of course. The dead man’s blood had long since stopped flowing.

The body remained standing, swaying, for a half-second that - in hindsight - Dean would remember as lasting for hours. Eventually, Dean watched it collapse to its knees, and then to the floor.

And behind it, Dean saw a man.

A  _ living  _ man.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean froze.

The living man was breathing. He was visibly breathing, and his movements were careful and deliberate and alive. He was tall. White. Brown-haired. Wearing a pack and an expression that was just as suddenly and devastatingly shaken as Dean’s, and a t-shirt that said  _ Smile! It's not the end of the world! _

It was impossible.

Dean half-shook his head. It was  _ impossible. _

The man looked gaunt - not in his body, which looked to be strong under that t-shirt - but in his eyes, hungry in a way that went beyond food and water. He looked like no one Dean had ever seen before - not a spirit conjured by Dean’s memory, it couldn’t be. He looked too real, too solid. He had sweat on his forehead, which had dampened the hair at his temples. His chest was moving. He was  _ breathing.  _ And breathing hard.

Dean stared at him, unable to move. 

God, this was impossible. 

Two years of isolation couldn’t be broken on a yellow morning like this, a misted normal morning like any other. The days of loneliness and confusion couldn’t be ended, as simply as wasting a dead man and finding a living one behind it.

The man was shifting. His expression wasn’t changing. He still looked badly unnerved as he raised his hands up. He had no weapon that Dean could see, but for the first time in a long time Dean felt a new kind of fear. 

The dead man had been dangerous because it would kill Dean and eat him, if it had the chance.

This living man was dangerous because Dean had no idea what he would do.

“You’re alive,” the man said. His voice was deep, and cracked on the second word like a rock splitting in two.

His hands were still lifted, palms facing Dean - a gesture of surrender, Dean realised, and it was only then that he noticed the blade in his hand was pointed at the man’s throat, and he was standing with his feet apart, as though ready for a fight. He eyed the man, up and down. No visible weapon. No shiftiness in his eyes. No way of telling what he might be thinking.

Dean dropped his stance, and lowered the blade so that it pointed to the floor - but kept his grip on it tight and strong.

The man seemed to relax ever so slightly. His fingers curled in towards his palms, but he kept them raised.

“So’re you,” Dean said. The first words in two years that he’d spoken to another living human being, and they were barely a grunt.

“How?” the man said. Dean let out a little sharp, dry sigh that could have been a laugh, and shook his head.

His mind was spinning. This couldn’t be happening - and yet here he was, trading words with another person. A real, living, breathing, sweating, hungry person.

“What. You think I have any damn answers,” he said, and it should have been a question but his tone made it a statement - flat and angry. “Luck. Who the hell knows.”

His sense of reality was lifting away with the morning mist as the sun rose, turning the yellow dawn to pale grey. He felt a few yards outside of his own body. He was  _ talking.  _ To another  _ person.  _ A person who looked just as tense and lost and confused as Dean felt.

“What’s your deal,” Dean said out loud.

“My… deal?”

“Yeah. Your deal. Your story. Whatever. What’s your thing, what are you doing here.” The sentences snapped out quickly, angrily. The man’s expression shifted, became defensive.

“I’m just looking,” he said.

“For what?”

“Anything. Anyone.” The man lifted a shoulder, and then let it fall. “Life.”

Dean gave him a weak, sarcastic smile. “Well,” he said, holding out his arms slightly, “that’s gone well.”

They stared at each other for a moment - and then a moment more. Dean couldn’t seem to stop looking. The man’s eyes, they were blue and clear and thoughtful. He held himself up tall, his bearing almost military. Dean imagined he could hear the sighing of his breath, the beating of his heart - see the pulse of it in his throat.

He was  _ alive.  _ They were both alive.

And suddenly, Dean found that he hated the man. Hated him for standing right there, and being everything Dean had wanted for so long, and also nothing like Dean had expected. This fixed nothing. This helped nothing. Neither of them had any answers.

Dean was still just a dumb piece of crap in a broken world who was alive for no reason - it was just that now, there was another piece of crap standing right in front of him.

He turned away.

“I’m coming with you,” the man said.

“I don’t care.”

“We need to move. There was a big crowd in the town half an hour east of here and they were moving this way when I dodged past. I only came anyway because I thought there might be food here.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m Castiel.”

“I don’t care,” said Dean.

***

Everything was different with two.

Jobs were done faster. Sweeping houses took half as long, and Castiel was thorough enough with it that Dean was content not to do the whole thing himself. Putting up the makeshift alarms - Dean’s strings of cans, and Castiel’s simple trip wires - was easily done with two pairs of hands, and Castiel was good at working quietly. 

When walking, they could watch two directions at once. 

When resting, one could close his eyes for ten minutes while the other watched, and then they’d switch.

They barely spoke for three days. Dean found words sticking in his throat. The confusion, the absurdity, the pointlessness of the two of them having found each other - it choked him. Castiel, for his part, seemed to progress from stoic to surly as the hours went by and nothing passed between them but grunts and single words of basic communication. There was a constant pressure to be doing more, to be taking advantage of this newfound, miraculous, impossible companionship - and it only twisted Dean’s anger tighter.

It should have felt better than before, Dean knew. It almost did.

“You got no weapon?” Dean said on the evening of the third day, as they walked down a wide forest trail towards a town that had been signposted a while back. Castiel looked down at his empty hands, as though briefly reminded of them, and their emptiness. 

“No.”

“How the hell are you alive?”

“You saved me,” Castiel said simply.

“What - you never ran into a single damn no-brainer before that?”

“No-brainer?”

Dean rolled his eyes, hefted his blade in his hand. “Come on. You know.  _ Them. _ ”

“Oh. Yes, of course. I just avoided them.”

There was a pause. The forest was a pale and beautiful one full of silver birches, their dappled trunks and gentle leaves seeming too soft, too delicate, in a world turned brutal. There was birdsong. 

Dean swallowed. On edge, he stared around at the quiet beauty of it as he walked. These days, he liked it more in the foul and dirty places, where he was the cleaner thing. Here, he felt like the part of the world that was wrong.

“What do you call ‘em, then,” he said aloud, after a while.

“Them?”

“Dude. The no-brainers. The dead things running around trying to kill us. You know,  _ them. _ ”

Castiel squinted sideways at him, and Dean met his eyes.

“I call them people,” he said.

***

On the morning of the fourth day, as they packed up their things and prepared to leave the house they’d stopped in for the night, Dean cleared his throat. Castiel, who’d been sitting on the couch and folding a sleeping bag into his pack with capable hands, looked up with vaguely hostile enquiry in his eyes.

Today, his t-shirt said  _ Love, Laugh, Live. _

On the other half of the couch was a huge, dried-out bloodstain. There had been no sign of the person who had left it there - but then again, there usually wasn’t, these days.

“We need to make a stop somewhere,” Dean said. “Grocery store. Find food. Supplies.”

“There’s enough food in the houses we stop at.” Castiel’s voice was rougher in the early morning.

“It’s never guaranteed. Tomorrow there might be nothing. Just having some reserves will be good. There’s a place we passed a sign to yesterday. Big Costco.”

“It’s dangerous. There are always more of them around the grocery stores. It’s where people ran to.”

Dean swallowed, hard. Did Castiel really think that Dean didn’t know that? That Dean had leapt to this decision? Of course he’d weighed the danger against the possible gain.

“It’s the end of the goddamn world,” Dean said. “You think I wanna die?”

Castiel stared at him, his expression carefully blank.

“This is how I don’t die,” Dean said. “Calculated fucking risks.”

“A night without food won’t kill us,” Castiel said. He was so calm, his tone so reasonable. Dean tightened his hand into a fist and thought about punching him, hard. “Going to get reserves might kill us.”

He had a point, and that only worsened everything.

“I’m going,” Dean said. “You wanna not come, fine. We go our separate ways.”

“You’d be alright with that?” Castiel asked, and Dean heard the incredulity in his tone. He snorted, picked up his bag and his blade, and headed for the door.

“What do you think we’re gonna do together, anyway?” he threw back over his shoulder. “Repopulate the Earth?”


	4. Chapter 4

Castiel followed him to the Costco, though he said nothing for the whole walk and Dean could feel the disapproval radiating from him like heat off sun-baked tarmac.

“Would you shut up?” he said, as they neared the store. The road that led up to it was a metallic jungle of crashed and bent and burned cars, that clicked and creaked occasionally as parts moved and fell. Dean kept his eyes sharp. No-brainers lurked in places like this, turned when they died in their cars, too lost and thoughtless to wander anywhere else.

“I said nothing.”

“Like hell. You got anything at all you can use to hit things?”

Castiel left a thoughtful pause, and then held up his hands.

Dean snorted. “Yeah, okay, Muhammad Ali. If we see any no-brainers, get behind me.”

“I could always avoid them, in the way that I have been successfully doing for twenty-three months. There’s no need for violence against them.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Like they care?”

“They can’t care. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.”

God, Dean hated him.

The Costco felt stupidly mammoth when they were up close to it, a building made to house hundreds of visitors at once left catering for just the two of them. It felt foolish to walk through the front doors of the place, but it was all quiet inside from what they could tell when they pressed their faces to the clouded, dirty glass panes, and Dean wasn’t keen to pick his way through dark and angular backrooms that were in all likelihood packed with no-brainers round every corner - so he pried open the sliding doors with his blade. 

And inside they went.

The scent was powerful enough for even Dean, inured by the months he’d spent on the road, to reel slightly. When he looked up, it was just another Costco - a warehouse ceiling, products piled impossibly high, everything silver and grey and white, clean enough and functional.

When he looked down, fallen bodies lined the aisles.

Castiel crouched by the first one they came to, and gently pressed a hand to its shoulder. A young one, Dean thought. Small. Wearing a pink jacket and a knitted scarf.

“Does it have a hole in its head?” Dean asked roughly.

When Castiel looked up at Dean, it was a look like a bullet.

“Don’t they deserve any respect at all?” he demanded. His tone was quiet, but his fury was condensed into the smaller space of his softly-spoken words, shuddering them with intensity. Dean set his jaw.

“That thing could bite you and it’d all be over,” he said. He kept his voice low, too, his eyes roving occasionally over the nearest bodies for signs of movement. 

“I’m just -”

“You don’t have the luxury of being a fucking hippie about it.”

“Being a so-called hippie about it has got me this far,” Castiel snapped back. “I’m not advocating that we hug trees and smoke marijuana. I’m saying that we’re human and these people are human and we could take a minute, just - just  _ one  _ minute, to -”

He seemed to run out of momentum. His head dropped, and his eyes closed.

Dean shrugged.

“You can,” he said. “Personally I’d take the trees and weed over whatever this is, though.”

Castiel stood up, his soldier’s bearing straightening out his back, making him stiff and resolute.

“You’re an animal,” he said simply. “With no ounce of compassion.”

Dean stared after him as he walked away down an aisle for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders, and followed. He’d take being practical and well-fed over being a hungry, pretentious asshole with a stick up his ass.

He opened his mouth to say that - and then closed it, when he saw what aisle they were on.

“Oh,  _ hell  _ yes,” he said.

***

“An’ that’s - that’s when, I fucking, stabbed him in the head,” Dean said, and wiped his hand over his mouth, and then looked down at it in confusion when it felt too heavy to be his own.

Castiel, sitting opposite him on the floor of the kitchen in the house they’d found to stay the night in, gave him a look of utter disgust.

“You don’ wanna sip yet?” Dean said, and held out the bottle in his hand. It glowed faintly in the moonlight filtering in through the window.

“You should never have started drinking. What if something happens?” Castiel folded his arms. “One of us has to be ready to save our lives.”

“Oh, like tha’s gonna be fucking  _ you, _ ” Dean said, and snorted, and took another swallow. The whisky burned hot all the way down his throat, and it felt exactly right. God, he’d needed this. The way that it felt like it was stripping him from the inside out. The way it made everything feel distant and unimportant and kind of strangely funny.  _ Really  _ funny. He laughed again.

“Of all the people,” Castiel said softly. “It had to be you.”

He sounded so painfully sad that Dean didn’t know what to say to it, so he ignored it.

“Wha’s the story then.” He waved his hand in Castiel’s direction. “C’mon. How’d it happen. Where were you. When it all fell apart.”

“Do you really think I want to talk to you?”

“I think we’re both dying to fucking talk to someone.” Castiel gave him an odd look, and Dean shrugged clumsily and aggressively. “What? Like it’s not true?”

“Perhaps.”

“And there’s no one else here, s’there?” 

“Regrettably.”

Dean waved a hand, swatting his dry irony away.

“So go on,” he said. “Tell me what it looked like when the world fucking died.”

Castiel stared at him. Dean took another sip.

The kitchen was large enough that they could both sit with their legs stretched out in front of them, and not even be close to touching. Dean had carefully angled his legs so that they weren’t pointing right at Castiel; somehow, even the directness of that non-touch would be too much to pass between them.

“It -” Castiel let out a breath. The fight seemed to go out of him. His shoulders sagged. “It looked like a Wednesday.” 

“Mmm. Yeah. Fuck Wednesdays.” Why had he said that? Still, it sounded about right.

“Everything was normal,” Castiel said. “And then it all went wrong. People… people I knew, everyone I knew, just different. Suddenly. Some of them got bitten, but others… they just  _ changed. _ No reason for it. I tried -”

Castiel stopped, and rested his head back against the fridge he was leaning against, and swallowed.

“You try to save ‘em?” Dean asked.

Across the room, Castiel nodded. He didn’t seem able to speak.

“Course you did. I put my bes’ friend in my bathroom and I talked to him for two weeks an’ I fed him an’ I asked him to stop tryin’ to eat me. He fuckin’, he didn’t even, he didn’t listen.” Dean laughed again.

“I thought I could reverse it,” Castiel said. “I thought there was a chance that they were still -”

“Still in there.” Dean coughed. “They’re not. They’re fucking gone.”

“You don’t know that,” Castiel shot back. Dean shook his head, muzzily and over-emphatically.

“Only ones with a chance of comin’ back are the ones who’re still alive,” he said. “An’ that’s you. And me.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, but for the first time in a long time, everything felt quiet in his head. No knives in his brain. No remembering all the knives he’d put into everyone else’s brains. No worrying, no hum, no pain.

“Coming back,” Castiel said. “From what?”

Dean raised the bottle towards him, in a toast. “Animals,” he said. “Without an ounce of compassion.” He took two large gulps of whisky, and gasped when his mouth caught fire with the wet dirt heat of it.

Silence fell between them, briefly.

“M’brother’s out there,” Dean said eventually.

“He is?”

“Mmmmmmm. Yup.” 

“I thought you hadn’t spoken to anyone for two years, either.”

“No no no no no no no.” Dean waved his hand. “I didn’t speak to - to him, like, since before everything happened. I just know. He’s out there.”

The expression on Castiel’s face shut down, and he said nothing - just kept watching Dean.

“He’s in California,” Dean said. “We’re walkin’ to California to find Sam. Did I tell you tha’s what we’re fucking - doing?”

His vision was starting to twist. The kitchen was moving and blurring at the edges.

“No,” Castiel said. “But that’s fine.”

There was pity in his voice. Dean drank again; his stomach ached with fire. The small part of his brain that was sharply and stoically watching his actions with complete sobriety seemed to narrow, and gave him a warning sting of shame.

He ignored it, and took another small sip, just to spite it.

“I didn’ fuckin’ see a body,” he said.

“What?”

“Y’know. On movies. In movies. When someone’s really dead. You see the body. No body, not dead!” he said loudly.

“Yes… I see.”

“I never saw m’brother’s… my - he’s not. He isn’t.” Dean shook his head. “No. You know I want to put a bullet in my own fuckin’ head but I don’t because I gotta find Sam. S’why I decided not to just put my own goddamn self down. Why’m I alive?” He shrugged expansively, spilling a little whisky. “Why the fuck am I alive? Because I gotta find Sam.”

The silence was long, and painful, and filled with the sound of static that was rising in Dean’s ears.

“We’ll find him, then,” Castiel said.

Dean leaned forward.

“You know,” he said. “The only person I hate more than you. Is me.”

Fifteen minutes later, he was violently sick. In the morning, he wouldn’t remember the way that Castiel gave him water and put him to bed. But he’d remember the look of complete understanding in Castiel’s eyes, when he said those last words.


	5. Chapter 5

They headed west, largely uneventfully. Dean tried to keep to forest trails, off the beaten track; it was far less likely that they’d meet a no-brainer in the middle of deep woods than walking down a street that had once been a busy highway. With Castiel the pacifist in tow, Dean was keen to avoid as many of the ugly dead things as he could.

They made steady progress, going by the map that Dean found in the desk-drawer of one of the houses they stayed in - a big old place with creaky walls and floors, and a pit in the backyard with ten dead bodies piled into it that moved but couldn’t stand up or climb out.

The whisky found its way into Dean’s hand every night. There was always a liquor store to stop by, somehow. He’d never allowed himself this indulgence before, but with a second pair of sober eyes watching his back as he drank, it didn’t seem to matter so much. And it took the edge off. Made things less awkward with Castiel, too.

“The fuck kind of name is Castiel, anyway,” he said once.

“Mine,” replied Castiel, and that was that.

The man was infuriating. He strode along with the determination, bearing, and neat step of a goddamn marine, but he refused to pick up so much as a stick off the ground to defend himself. He wore those ridiculous t-shirts, seemed to think they were funny - ironic, or something. Dean's current least favourite was the one that said,  _ TGIF! _

Castiel made faces at the way Dean talked and the way Dean drank and the way Dean saved his sorry ass every time there was a no-brainer near them. One of the creatures actually managed to corner him -  _ again - _ one time when they were hiking down a trail and split up to pee; Dean barely reached the pair of them in time, the living and the dead, to keep that balance weighted so equally.

“We have got to get you a weapon,” Dean said at the time, huffing.

“No,” replied Castiel. And that was that.

He snored sometimes. They always slept in the same room, for safety, and he snored. When he woke up, he always said ‘hello, Dean’ in that ridiculously low voice of his, as though there were any point to greeting the same person - the only person - that seemed to exist on Earth, apart from himself. Obviously it was hello, Dean. It wasn’t going to be hello to Jim fucking Carrey, was it?

And then there was the tea that he carried around with him. Fucking  _ fruit  _ tea. Or even  _ floral  _ tea. In a flask. Where did he even get the stuff? How did he make it? Half of his pack had to be made up of tea bags and water bottles. As if there were still fucking Targets in the hellhole that the world had become, and he could swing by to pick up lemon and elderflower iced tea.

He made deadpan comments that Dean only realised were snide three hours later. He rolled his eyes when he thought Dean wasn’t watching. He said unexpected things and did unexpected things and threw Dean off. He was judgemental and proud and irritating and Dean  _ hated  _ him.

And, increasingly, felt a pit in his chest whenever he thought of being alone again.

The loneliness, Dean had to admit, had eased.

His skin still ached from lack of touch, but that wasn’t something Castiel was going to help with. Sometimes, Dean chafed his own arms, slapped his own stomach to a rhythm, just to feel a touch - even a rough one, the only kind he allowed himself.

“You religious?” Dean said one night, just before they went to sleep.

“God exists,” Castiel replied. “I just don’t believe in him anymore.”

***

The night the building came down, they argued properly for the first time.

It started stupidly enough. They’d stopped at another crapshow of a house, dilapidated and groaning, with flies round the fridge and blood on the walls - but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and as they headed west the towns were getting scarcer and the ground was getting drier and the no-brainers weren’t thinning out in numbers. And there was no food.

“I told you we should’ve stopped at another grocery store,” Dean said, his tone sharp as they settled down for the night - Castiel on a bed, Dean on the floor. It was his turn. Hunger was a blade in his belly. He was out of whisky.

“You’ll survive one night,” Castiel said blandly. Dean, stung, narrowed his eyes.

“I never went hungry, even one night, when it was just me,” he said.

“Then kill me, and carry on going without me, and eat every night like a king.”

“You know what? You don’t have to be a dick about it,” Dean said, sitting up. “Like, I know this will shock you, but you don’t  _ have  _ to be a dick about it.”

“I’m sorry, is this a self-directed monologue or is this aimed at me?”

“Just because it’s the apocalypse doesn’t mean I have to miss my meals,” Dean said. “And just because you won’t waste any braindead walking meat sacks, we have to keep skipping out on visiting any places with good food. This is your goddamn fault. I can’t leave you alone because you’ll die and I can’t take you with me because you’ll die.”

“Why would you even care?” Castiel demanded, his tone rising as he sat up, too. “Why not just let one of the dead people out there eat me? You could just do it. There’s no one to judge you. You wouldn’t have to cover it up or make it look like an accident. You wouldn’t have my blood on your hands. You could just let them eat me and all your problems would be over.”

“Fuck you,” said Dean.

“Just do it,” said Castiel. “Just let them eat me. What does it even matter.”

“Shut the hell up. We don’t talk like that -”

“Oh? Mr Bullet-in-my-Head doesn’t want to talk about dying now?”

“Shut the fuck up, Castiel.” Dean could hear the way his tone dropped, the irritation of hunger giving way to genuine anger.

“Why should I? I hold you back. I slow you down. I make your life so much worse in every conceivable way and you really aren’t afraid to tell me that. So, what’s the point of keeping me around?”

“Stop it!” Dean could feel his handle on the conversation, on their situation, slipping. The make-believe world of rules - rules of decency, of morality - seemed to slip sideways, and Dean was suddenly and horrifically aware of everything that the two of them could do to each other.

“Just hit me over the head right now and leave me outside for the night. One of them will find me. It’s that easy. And -”

“Shut the FUCK up!”

Castiel blinked at him in the darkness, seemingly stunned into silence by Dean’s outburst. Dean got to his feet, wrenched open the door of the bedroom, and slammed it behind him. The house groaned spectacularly, but Dean paid no attention. He could feel his heart pounding. His breath was coming too fast. He needed air, he needed space; he stepped through their sound traps with practised ease, ducking under wires and stepping over cans, his vision pulsing slightly in time with his heartbeat as he made his way outside the front door and out into the cool, dark night.

The whole world made no sense. And Dean himself made no sense, when Castiel was beside him - and they could kill each other, or they could just live with each other, and no one would care either way. Dean’s body, his mind, all of it, made no sense when Castiel could shut it all down in a second - or Dean could use both to shut Castiel down, instead, and kill him. The power of it, the choice - and how little it mattered - it made Dean sick. 

He slammed the front door and walked a few steps out into the front yard.

Behind him, the house groaned again.

And then it kept groaning.

The sound yawned wider, and wider - impossibly loud, ridiculously so. Dean turned to face the building, his eyes wide and disbelieving. Against the backdrop of a moonlit, starry night, the dirty old house screamed its protest - and shifted.

The whole place  _ moved.  _ And then a window shattered, and the door frame cracked. The walls sang a song of impending disaster. One of them shuddered, buckled. 

Another window burst outward. 

A roof tile slipped and cracked on the floor a few feet from where Dean was standing, and then another, and another. There was an almighty crash from inside, and a sighing of crumbling cement, and then another crash.

The place was coming down.

Upstairs, there was the sound of a muffled yell - and Dean’s eyes widened in horror.

“Castiel!”

He was moving before he’d even had a chance to think it through. The front door didn’t open, too much weight resting now on its cracked frame; Dean used his elbow to break a ground-floor window and climbed in. Inside, the ceiling was juddering, the walls quaking, the whole house like a dying man in his final throes. 

Dean stumbled for the stairs, and clawed his way up them on hands and knees as they shook.

“Castiel! Cas-” A cloud of dust burst into Dean’s face as a wall disintegrated, and he retched and coughed as it hit the back of his throat when he breathed in. The house was dark and he kept having to feel for the next step, confused. They were interminable, they never ended, they went on and on and on -

He gained the top step just in time to see a wall collapse, and the ceiling cave in on the landing.

And for a moment, and then another, everything was suddenly still. 

Dean stood up, slowly, his arms out for balance, ready for the building to start its crumbling all over again. The whole place had the feeling of a card tower that had found a single, shining, miraculous moment of steadiness in the eye of a hurricane.

“Fuck,” he said, blinking dust out of his eyes. “Castiel?”

The house was all in darkness, and the motes of plaster hanging in the air only made it harder to see.

“Castiel?!” Dean shouted, louder.

Nothing.

With a curse, Dean began to move. The collapsed ceiling had fallen like rubble to the floor, and he picked his way through it, willing his body to be lighter and quieter than it could possibly be. The boards beneath his feet protested; there was the sound of splintering - but no snapping, no heaving, and Dean reached the door to the room where he’d left Castiel. He swallowed hard.

_ Be alive. I hate you. Be alive. _

He pushed it open, and there was Castiel. The room was a catastrophe of dust and fallen plaster, too, and in the centre of it Castiel was lying on the bed at an angle, his limbs thrown out as though he’d tried to stand up and lost his balance. His skin had a nasty, greyish pallor, and with a sickening leap Dean knew that he was dead, that he’d already turned, that he was going to have to put Castiel down the same way that he’d put down his father and Benny and Jo and Ellen and -

He neared the bed, picking up his blade as he went, his heart pounding furiously in his chest.

_ Be alive. _

Castiel’s chest was moving, and Dean let out a breath. His eyes were closed, though, and there was a thick line of red on his forehead; looking around the room, Dean caught sight of a slick of blood on a nearby fallen rafter.

“Castiel?” Dean said, and shook him roughly. Castiel murmured something, but didn’t move. “Castiel. Come on. We gotta go.”

“My head…”

“I know. Come on. We can’t stay in here.”

Dean turned and grabbed his pack, pulling it over his shoulder. Their sleeping bags and the sound traps, they’d have to leave - no way there was time to pack everything up neatly. Castiel’s pack was heavier than Dean’s, and Dean grunted as he lifted it and turned back towards the bed.

Castiel was still lying there, immobile.

“Come on,” Dean urged. “Don’t make me do this.”

“I can’t move,” Castiel said. His voice was so determinedly calm that Dean could hear all the fear behind it. “My legs. My - they won’t move -”

“Did you hit your back?” Dean demanded. Somewhere outside the room, there was an ominous rumble.

“No…”

“Then you’re getting the hell up, because we can’t stay here!” A thud from outside, and then a screech, and then powder began to fall from the ceiling again like volcanic ash. Castiel started to cough, and he cried out as the floor gave a creak and a wail. In the darkness, Dean reached out, weighed down by the two packs and by the blade.

“Take my hand,” he said. Castiel shook his head.

“Just go -”

“Take my fucking hand!”

And Castiel opened his eyes, and unclenched his fist, and put his hand in Dean’s.

Dean hoisted Castiel upright, his teeth gritted. Hands tight in each other’s, Dean led Castiel out of the room and across the landing, moving as quickly as he dared when Castiel’s every step was shaky and uncertain. When Dean looked back to check on Castiel by the light of the moon through the landing window, he saw the blood streaking wetly down his cheek, looking like dark ichor in the silverish light, the shine catching those blue eyes and making them bright - and Dean saw suddenly a wounded half-god, or Achilles himself from the books he’d used to love to read, not simply the Castiel he was used to. For a swirling moment, they stared at each other and Dean had the sudden, wild urge to laugh at the nightmarish beauty of it all -

And then the ceiling slipped completely from over them to under them. And Dean’s arm was under Castiel’s and he was stumbling them down the stairs, and their packs were swinging wildly off his shoulders and his blade was inches from his own face as he almost lost his balance and only Castiel’s stunned, semi-concussed weight pulled him upright again. They barrelled down the hall, Castiel’s feet stumbling over his own trip wires, the way the cans rattled drowned out by the sound of the house folding in on itself.

Dean threw open the front door, and hurled himself and Castiel out into the night. 

They lay, breathing heavily, on the ground - and watched the building disintegrate. 

Dean couldn’t take his eyes off the scene; there was something in the lines of the roof’s collapse that recalled the Titanic slipping beneath the waves, a broken behemoth that should have been unbreakable. Just another dead thing in a world that had all but passed over.

Castiel’s hand let go of Dean’s, and travelled up to his shoulder. He smacked it a couple of times, roughly. Dean could hear his breathing, laboured and harsh. It was a symphony. Castiel was alive.

“Dean,” said Castiel. “Dean -  _ Dean - _ ”

Turning at the sound of the urgency in Castiel’s voice, Dean felt his insides go cold.

No-brainers. Pulled out of the woods by the sound of the collapse, hungry, mindless. Under the light of the moon, their skin was papery and rough-looking, cheeks hollow, teeth showing. Lurching, arms out, they came for the two fallen figures, their filmy static eyes fixed on the promise of food.

There were too many of them. Ten, in the first wave, but Dean could already hear more of them following behind. Surely, there were far too many.

Dean looked over at Castiel, who had resignation on his face and blood on his cheek. A half-god, beautiful. Alive. Someone Dean could save. Someone Dean  _ wanted  _ to save.

“Get behind me,” Dean growled. His hand tightened on the blade.


	6. Chapter 6

Covered in blood, and guts - but with a perfectly clean hand, washed off thoroughly in water - Dean dabbed at the cut on Castiel’s forehead.

 

The night was easing its hold, and a murky lightness to the air promised the arrival of dawn before long. Castiel, propped up against a tree, came round slowly. Dean tried to soften his touch, but the wound needed to be cleaned or it’d only get infected. He kept his expression blank as Castiel blinked his eyes open sleepily, and his gaze gradually sharpened into focus.

Dean felt a little pleased hum sound in his brain - not the usual high hum note of panic that he heard these days, but something sweeter, in a major key. It felt good to be looked at by Castiel. To know he was alive.

_ The blood, Dean. Focus on the blood. Clean it up. _

Castiel said nothing as Dean continued his gentle ministrations, using a tissue soaked in water from a bottle to wash the cut clean. He winced a couple of times, which Dean took as a good sign. If Castiel were out of it enough to not even notice pain, they’d probably have a different problem. Not that Dean knew a damn thing about head wounds, and how much trouble Castiel was in, anyway.

“Your hands,” Castiel said, eventually.

“Mm?”

“They’re very gentle. I’ve only ever seen…” Castiel broke off, but Dean knew what he meant. The way Dean touched things was always rough, unkind, hasty. Functional at best, angry at worst.

Not knowing what to reply, Dean said nothing.

“Back at the - at the house,” Castiel said, as Dean finished up his work and reached back into his pack, feeling for the first-aid kit he kept in a separate pocket. He’d used up all the anti-bacterial wipes a few months back when he’d scraped his leg jumping out a window, but he still had some band-aids left.

“Mmm,” Dean grunted.

“What - happened? I was in that room and then the whole roof just seemed to cave in, and then it’s all a blur.”

“You don’t remember?” Dean ripped open the band-aid box and selected one that looked about the right size from the assortment. The cut wasn’t that long and didn’t seem to be too deep; from what very little Dean knew, head wounds tended to bleed a lot even when they weren’t all that serious. Now that it was all cleaned up, Dean could see that it was a gash no longer than his pinky fingernail.

“I remember…” Castiel’s face screwed up with the effort, and then he relaxed it again when the movement seemed to cause him pain. “I remember the house falling. But you were inside it. Didn’t you leave?”

“I came back,” Dean said shortly.

“And then we were outside… and there were -” Castiel sat up straight, suddenly, almost knocking Dean over as he hovered the band-aid over the cut, trying to figure out the best angle to put it on.

“Hey!”

“There were so many of them,” Castiel said urgently. “Did I dream that? There were dozens of them and I was on the ground. And you…”

Dean looked down at the floor, feeling suddenly and absurdly shy.

“You saved me,” Castiel said. “Again.”

“There weren’t so many,” Dean said, covered in their filth and grime, feeling like a dirty and ugly creature. Castiel had got into his head and he couldn’t help but see every blow he’d dealt tonight as a blow against a person, a human being. He felt sick at himself - and yet he wouldn’t trade it, would do it again, because the man in front of him was still alive. Dean hated him - of course he did, he reminded himself, suddenly - but he was alive. And that wasn’t all that mattered, but it was what mattered the most.

He pressed the band-aid to Castiel’s forehead, and Castiel closed his eyes under the touch.

“Thank you,” he said.

Dean shrugged.

“We can’t rest here. We need to keep moving. We’re barely two hundred yards from the house and the noise will have attracted others who just didn’t make it in time for the big showdown.” 

He stood up, and held out his hand for Castiel’s.

“Let’s go,” he said. Castiel looked at Dean’s hand and his forehead creased, as if in recognition. He reached up, and took Dean’s hand - slowly, though, his fingertips brushing Dean’s palm before settling at his wrist and holding tight. 

It was the closest thing to a soft touch that Dean had experienced in two years. He felt his knees shake. His skin sang.

“Let’s go,” Castiel agreed, and with Dean’s help he got to his feet.

***

The atmosphere between them was different, after that night.

They found a place to crash, four hours’ walk from the house that had crumbled around them. Dean kicked the foundations of the new place before they went in, and slammed a couple of doors, damn the noise. Both of them were ready to drop, and Dean slept like the dead - and when he woke up, Castiel said,

“Hello, Dean.”

And Dean rolled his eyes and said nothing - but that spike of instant anger that he always felt towards Castiel, the stab of annoyance he felt at even their barest interaction, it was barely a tickle. He went through the motions of his exasperation, and got up, and went outside to try to clean himself off properly after the fight of the night before.

“I’ll be here,” Castiel said.

“No duh,” Dean said, but without any real sting in it.

There was a big rainwater tank in the back yard, which Dean opened cautiously and found to be full of water and nothing else - a blessing, given that the other couple he’d opened over the past two years had sprouted no-brainers the second he’d lifted the lid. Stripping down, he left his clothes and his blade on the bricked patio and reached into the tank, scooping up water with his hands and pouring it over his body.

It felt good to be out here, in the early morning, washing himself. The water glittered on his skin, cold enough to make him gasp, but the air was warm enough already that he didn’t shiver. His hands felt different, on himself. He scrubbed at the patches of brown and red on his arms with efficiency, but not harshness.

When the traces of before were gone, Dean kept going, cleaning his underarms and his stomach and his thighs. His skin hummed under his palms, that same sweet major note that his mind had made the night before - when he’d been kneeling beside Castiel, and Castiel had looked at him.

Unexpectedly, warmth flowered, and a rush went up his spine, and -

Dean swallowed.

_ That  _ hadn’t happened in a while. 

He frowned. Castiel was just upstairs - but he was busy packing up his things, Dean knew. He had a little time.

He moved his dripping hand up his thigh, letting the touch be slow and careful. He lingered at the crook of his leg, feeling the wave of warmth return, stronger. Gently, he took himself in hand, and stroked, once.

It felt - good. So good that he did it again, and a third time. He sighed as he hardened, bracing one hand against the tank. Shining water droplets were trickling from his wet hair down his brow as he bent his head and began to move a little faster.

He hadn’t done this in so long. 

He’d forgotten how it could feel, how his body could feel - warm, golden, sensitive in a way that didn’t mean vulnerability, that meant pleasure. Little stifled sighs began to escape him.

His body started to tense, one leg rising slightly off the floor as his muscles became taut. He tried to relax, but he was wound tight; it had been such a long time since he’d done this, felt this, that he knew he wasn’t going to last long. His hand was flying and it felt so - fucking - good -

His palm was kind, and the friction felt right; he kept his rhythm steady and strong, twisting when it felt good, letting his thumb slide forwards and back.

“Hhh - hhh - hhh -” His breath was stuttering. His toes curled.

His fingers - his fingers, they held him - Castiel’s fingers held his wrist and held him -

“Oh - f-fuck!”

His head snapped back as the tension in his body released, ripples of pleasure and heat shooting through him, making his knees weak. He leaned against the tank, its cool metal a steady weight.

He allowed himself several long moments of simple enjoyment, the glow of this feeling unfamiliar - a fact that made him feel strangely young, like a teenager all over again just for a moment or two. He cleaned himself off carefully, and then put his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky. 

Did he - had he really just - when he’d finished, had it been because -

“Dean?”

“Just dressing,” Dean said hurriedly, pulling on his shirt - filthy, nasty thing that it was - and checking to make sure he was washed all over.

“Take your time. I’m just going to make some tea.”

“Of course you are,” Dean said, but the frustration wasn’t there and the words sounded strange to his ears - too warm, too friendly.

He probably didn’t need to think about it, he decided.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beautiful art at the top of this chapter is, of course, by the incredibly talented [Threshie](http://threshasketch.tumblr.com)! You can find it [here](http://threshasketch.tumblr.com/post/174652474573) on Tumblr <3


	7. Chapter 7

They moved onwards at a steady pace, Dean making a quiet but firm decision to take it easy as long as Castiel was still recovering. The cut on his head looked clean enough and seemed to be healing well, but Dean wasn’t in the mood to take chances. 

That, in itself, was surprising.

He walked them down small roads, quiet ones, the nature of the forest around them changing. The bright-green shoots and young, perfect leaves eased into the mellow tones and patchwork shapes of summer.

“I’ve never walked so far,” Castiel said, one day, as they approached a little drugstore in a tiny, sundrenched town.

“No?”

“Not even when I was on my own, after everything happened.” That was how they referred to it, for now - the start of the end, the time when their lives went from day-jobs and daydreams to this strange and drawn-out nightmare.  _ Everything happened.  _ As though there were nothing left to happen, after that day. All the experiences, all possible events, occurred at once, and there was nothing left for after.

It was something that had felt truer when they started saying it than it felt now. Maybe at one time, the days had felt unreal and empty, just nothing after everything - but these days, Dean found himself looking at his life and seeing… something.

Not everything. Not nothing, though. Just - he caught Castiel’s eye as they went into the store, grabbing the bell above out of habit to still its ring, and smiled at him offhandedly - just something.

“I guess I’m only walking so hard because I’m going to find Sam,” Dean said as they split up, each heading to different aisles. The place was low-ceilinged, dingy, but not raided. Everything - there it was again - everything had happened too fast for there to be much panicked raiding of drugstores and food stores. They always found what they needed.

“I didn’t have a Sam,” Castiel said. There was the sound of him rattling through boxes, looking for the painkillers he wanted.

“You got one now, I guess.” Dean himself was on vitamin duty. There were packets and packets of the things; Castiel had said they needed some extra supplements, especially vitamin C, with their diet relying more and more strictly on canned food.

“Mmm.”

“You mind?” Dean said, asking a question that had occurred to him several times recently, but which he hadn’t had the courage to voice. He hated asking questions that he only wanted to hear one answer to - knew they were a promise of disappointment.

“Mind what?”

“You know, he’s my brother. Nothing to do with you.”

Castiel made a low, strange sound. Dean frowned.

“You OK?”

“Yes, fine. And no, I don’t mind. It’s not like I have anywhere else I’d prefer to go.”

“They’ve got great weather further north, this time of year. You could go see Yellowstone. See a moose. Or whatever it is that they have up there.” He began to walk further up his aisle, wanting to look at the hair products they had in the back. His comb was almost as toothless as some of the no-brainers he saw.

“I’m not sure meeting a moose would be a good idea,” Castiel said as Dean headed round the corner at the end of the aisle - and walked straight into the reaching arms of a no-brainer.

With a wordless yell, Dean stumbled backwards. 

His blade fell out of his hand.

The no-brainer made that low, awful sound, and came for him.

Where the hell had it been hiding? How had they both forgotten to sweep the store? This one was tall and its arms were strong, hands scrabbling at Dean’s shoulders, mouth gaping open. Its long hair hung in sick, greasy strands, torn t-shirt revealing a grey, flat, torn chest beneath. It smelled - God, it reeked, and when Dean thrust his hands against the thing’s throat to hold it off, his fingers sank through the skin and gripped the crumbling dryness of its vocal chords, its arteries, its spine.

“Shit - shit!” Dean yelled. The thing was pushing him back against the shelves, seeking a bite. In its filmy, pale eyes Dean saw a desperate hunger. He tried to kick it away, and half-fell. On his knees, his grip on its throat slipped and the thing was almost at his neck and its hair was on his face, and -

And with a croak, all the strength went out of it. 

The weight of it became a heavy, motionless one. Dean pushed the thing away from him, forcing a retch back down his throat.

There behind where it had stood, holding Dean’s blade and wearing an expression of single-minded and complete determination, was Castiel.

Dean stared up at him, still kneeling.

He looked down at the body of the no-brainer, foul and still, and then back to Castiel.

“You -” he managed, and the urge to be sick rose up again; he pushed it away. That had been far, far too close. He tried to breathe. “You - killed one?”

Castiel looked down at his hands, which were gripping the blade, two-handed and firm. He swallowed visibly, and then held it out to Dean.

“You were right,” he said.

Dean hesitated for a second, and then took it back, and got to his feet.

“I was?”

“Yes. I need a weapon.”

***

That night, Dean cleaned off his blade as the two of them sat together on the bed in the room they’d chosen, in the house that had been their best option. It was a one-storey place, this time - Dean was antsy about it, always preferred sleeping upstairs these days - but it was clean enough and it had bolts on the doors, and Castiel had been dead set on it. 

Dean wasn’t really in the mood to argue with Castiel, after what had happened.

He wiped a damp rag he’d found in the kitchen over the dark edge of the blade, washing away the gore. Castiel watched him quietly, the light in the room fading as the sun went down. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky, now, and the nights were always dark.

The silence between them was weighted heavily. Dean knew he had to say something, but didn’t know how to phrase himself. 

_ I’m alive because of you. I still have my brain as my own because you did something that you think is unforgivable. I didn’t think that I even wanted to be alive until you were the one that wanted me to be and you killed that thing to keep me that way.  _

“Hey,” he said. Castiel, as though he had been ready for this, shifted slightly on the bed and folded his hands. He was sitting at the head of the bed, with Dean at the foot.

“Yes, Dean.” He said it so courteously, like they were talking over coffee and not the bloodstained blade that one of them had used, today, to end one existence to save another.

“I wanna thank you.” He swallowed. “For - you know. Saving my life.”

Castiel paused, and when he spoke his words were weighted carefully. “You’re welcome,” he said.

“Just -” Dean swallowed. “Why’d you even - I mean, they’re people to you, right? So if I died… it’d be a person dead, just the same as -”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” Castiel said. “Obviously. I won’t treat them like things, and give them a name that dehumanises them and makes it easier for me to kill them with no emotional consequences, but I don’t put their continued existence on a par with your life.”

Dean nodded, made wordless by the force behind Castiel’s words. “I just…”

Castiel turned to look at him, his eyes hard.

“I remember how hard it was,” Dean said. “The first time I had to - you know.”

“Kill one of them?”

Dean swallowed. “Yeah,” he said.

“Are you going to tell me that it gets easier?” Castiel said, sounding sardonic. Dean shook his head.

“It does,” he said, “but only if you let it. And I don’t think you will.” Castiel blinked, and Dean shrugged. “Don’t seem the type. I just wanted to say that I’m - I’m grateful. I guess. And if you wanna…” He drew in a breath, and then pushed it out sharply, trying to sound manly. “If you wanna talk,” he said, making his words quick as bullets, “then I’m right here. That’s all.”

Castiel was quiet for a little while; the only sound in the room was Dean carefully cleaning the blade. Eventually, Castiel said,

“Alright. Thank you.”

He said nothing more.

Night fell around them completely, and it was time to sleep; Dean still felt wired with energy from his narrow escape of mere hours before, but he knew he’d wake up at dawn no matter when he decided to sleep, so it was best to fit in whatever shut-eye he could grab. 

When Dean moved to sleep on the floor, Castiel said,

“The bed’s wide enough for two.”

Dean stared at where he imagined Castiel to be, in the darkness.

“What?” he managed.

“I’ve seen how you walk after a night on the floor. It’s bad for your back and your neck. There’s room on this bed for two people. You might as well be up here as down there.”

Dean didn’t know what to say. Briefly, an image flashed before his eyes: himself, coming, to the thought of Castiel touching him.

It wasn’t something he had to think about, he reminded himself, pushing it away. And Castiel was right; he would feel a lot better in the morning if he slept on a soft mattress than on the hard floor. They didn’t always stay in rooms where there was a double bed, but since tonight it had worked out that way - what was the harm in it?

So he said,

“Okay. If you’re fine with it.”

He kept his tone cool, and thought he sounded almost unfriendly. Castiel, however, didn’t seem offended or reply with any irritation; there were only the sounds of him moving over on the bed, lying on the left-hand side so that Dean could take the right.

He did so. His hands felt suddenly slippery, his throat rough, as he settled himself down. He lay on his back, and wondered which way Castiel was facing.

Castiel breathed out, and Dean could tell from the way it sounded that Castiel was facing towards him. A little wave of warmth ran through him, which he tried to push down with increasing concern. It didn’t really work. His body was lighting up, and his imagination was providing him with some exciting options for how things could go. Hands on hands, hands on hips, hands on -

He blew out a sharp breath, and folded his arms.

His skin - his aching, aching skin - wanted to be touched.

It was frightening. This was frightening him, these thoughts, this wave of heat in him that rose up to thoughts of Castiel. It was something that couldn’t be, shouldn’t be - they were just two animals trying to survive, and that was it. There was no room for emotions like - like  _ that.  _ They could have each other’s backs, maybe. Brothers in arms. But nothing more than that. Anything more, it was - it was -

Frightening.

“Hey, Castiel?”

“Yes, Dean.” The response was immediate. Dean wondered whether Castiel, too, had been lying with his eyes open in the dark, chasing back thoughts and feelings as best he could.

“What are you afraid of?”

The question rang in the air. They didn’t usually ask each other things like that - emotional questions, ones that demanded some kind of revelation or vulnerability in answering. Weakness, or profundity, was offered in snapshots - not requested.

Still, after a few moments of thinking, Castiel said,

“The dead.”

“Mmm,” Dean said. Offering an opinion seemed too much; he kept the noise flat and non-judgmental.

“They’re everywhere. Round any corner. And they’re us. But they’re not.” The sentences were coming out of Castiel jerkily, hard and snapped-off at the ends. “I killed one today, because... it was going to change you into something else. Change you into being like them. And I will probably kill more of them, after today. To stop them changing you and stop them changing me.” Castiel swallowed audibly. “But if I kill them, haven’t they already changed me? I’ve already become something else. Something worse.” There was a beat of silence, and then he said, “A killer.”

Dean didn’t know what to say. Killing the no-brainers had only ever been survival. He’d been aware of himself shifting, becoming less affected by the blood and the foulness of it all - but he hadn’t thought of himself as becoming anyone hugely different to who he’d been before. He was just a little tougher.

Then again, he’d never been like Castiel. So determined to treat the no-brainers as human beings. There was less for them to change, to make Dean into a killer.

For a guy who stood and walked and talked like he’d been military trained, Castiel didn’t seem to have seen much action.

“Maybe it’s a change that doesn’t have to be all bad,” Dean offered. “Maybe now you’re a killer, yeah. But maybe you’re also a person who’ll go further to protect something. That’s pretty badass.”

“Do you think so?”

Castiel asked the question like it mattered. Dean found himself caught by surprise, unprepared for his words having much of an effect.

“Sure,” he said. “Me, I prefer people who’ll defend what they - you know - what they want to defend.” He’d veered dangerously close to saying  _ what they care about,  _ there. But they hated each other, Dean reminded himself. Castiel hated him. And he... did something that approximated hating Castiel. They just kept each other alive because - well, what else were they going to do with each other, after all.

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Dean swallowed, thinking. “I don’t know. It’s like, you got a choice between keeping this moral… thing… you built up in your head alive, or keeping a person alive. And I think it’s better to choose the person.”

Castiel seemed to absorb this in silence. Eventually, he said,

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Same question. What are you afraid of?”

Dean swallowed. Was this why he’d asked Castiel in the first place - because he’d been hoping the question would be turned back to him?

Images flickered through his mind. A dead woman, with her putrid flesh and rotten skin and desperate, hungry eyes. Himself, at a mirror, catching himself laughing at his own joke without realising and feeling his grip on reality loosen just an inch. Blood gushing out of his own leg in the middle of the night. The dark, the quiet, the silence.

Those things scared him, sure. But -

But his own body lighting up beside Castiel; his heartbeat pounding when they got near. Castiel’s body, so close to his own. The weakness of it, of his body, of their two bodies. The feeling that rushed up his spine, it was fear. Far more intense than when he fought for his life against a dead thing, or struggled to bandage himself up as he bled.

“You,” he said out loud.

Castiel went very still. 

Dean could hear his own breathing, too loud in the dark room.

“Me?”

“You. And me. Us.” Dean paused, and then said, “What we could do to each other.”

They were so close on the bed. Dean wanted Castiel to reach out, to take his hand, to punch him.  _ Anything. _

“I don’t understand.” Castiel’s voice was emotionless, and Dean recognised his effort to keep the conversation from growing too intense, too heavy. He blew out a breath.

“It’s like…” he began. “It’s like - what you were saying before. On the night the house came down. You said that I could just kill you and leave you and no one would know. And it’s like, there’s just us, you know? We could do literally anything to each other. I could kill you right now. I could strangle you with my bare hands. Or I could leave you here, in the middle of the night, and you’d never know where I went. We could be terrible to each other. And no one is here to give a shit or pass judgment except us.”

There was more to it than that; there was everything his hands were asking, everything his skin was asking, the way that he warmed and tensed at the barest thought of Castiel’s touch - but he didn’t even know how to begin putting that into words.  _ I’m scared I’ll kill you  _ was a lot less true than  _ I’m scared I’ll kiss you,  _ but even the idea of saying that out loud made him half-shudder.

There was a long silence. Dean let Castiel take his time, didn’t add anything else. He’d already probably said too much.

When he was starting to think that perhaps Castiel had fallen asleep, a voice came unexpectedly out of the dark.

“On the night the house came down,” Castiel said, “did you think about leaving me in there?”

“What?” The demand came out sharp. “No.”

“Not even for a second? I don’t mean this accusatorially. I wouldn’t blame you.”

Dean took a breath, and tried to pack away his initial defensiveness. 

_ Had  _ he thought about it?

“No,” he said again, but more slowly. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t even - I didn’t really think about anything, I guess. I just saw the house coming down, and you were in it.” He shrugged, making a little  _ swish  _ sound as his shoulders moved on the mattress. “I didn’t even think of calling to you or waiting to see if you were gonna make it out yourself. I just went.”

Castiel let out a sigh. The sound of it sent a wave of heat through Dean’s body, and he shifted, trying to ease it.

“You could have let me die,” Castiel said. 

“Well - not -”

“And I could have let you die, today. But we didn’t do that. So all those terrible things you’re afraid we could do to each other… I don’t think you have to worry.”

_ And the wonderful things,  _ Dean thought.  _ The wonderful things we could do? What about those? They scare me even more. _

He kept his silence, though. That was far too much to try to word aloud.

“I’ll have nightmares tonight,” Castiel murmured.

Dean closed his eyes.

“Well, I’ll be here,” he said.


	8. Chapter 8

They moved on, and the land started to become drier. They found themselves walking through a deserted town - their usual backroad trails were petering out into wide fields, wildly overgrown with untended crops, unwalkably dense. And so here they were, on a cracked-tarmac street in a tiny town. There were invisible strokes up Dean’s spine, convincing him that they were being watched, forcing him to turn and look behind them every couple of seconds.

“We’re going to have to start gathering supplies,” Castiel said quietly, keeping his eyes moving alertly from building to building. His checks were quick and methodical, practiced and professional; for the hundredth time, Dean wondered what branch of the military he was from. “For the desert. If we’re going to make it all the way to California. We should probably start checking cars, too -”

“Nah. It’s safer to walk.”

Castiel frowned. “In what world? I had a van for six months and it’s the safest I’ve ever felt. Out in the desert, we’ll get heatstroke and die.”

“Last time I tried to pick up a new car,” Dean said, “there was a no-brainer in the trunk. Time before that, the noise of the engine attracted a damn horde. Time before _that,_ I almost got eaten when I went to fill up my gas tank. And let me guess - your van, you crashed it. Or got stuck in it in the middle of a horde. Cars are death traps out here, man. Noise and hassle. It ain’t worth it.”

“If the only issues you have with them are noise and hassle, then I could level you with a charge of hypocrisy,” Castiel said drily. Dean took a moment to realise that he was being insulted.

“Hey,” he said. “Come on. Play nice.”

He was smiling, though.

“In the desert, there is a far smaller chance of running into a horde. And a far higher chance of just dying of starvation or thirst, if we don’t move quickly enough,” Castiel pointed out.

Dean said nothing, lapsing into unconvinced silence.

“At the very least, we need significantly more supplies,” Castiel pressed. “Some way of getting at water. Some protection from the sun. Unless you already have those things?”

“Nah.” Dean swallowed. “You’re right. We’ll just drop into some of those survival store places when we see ‘em.”

They walked on in silence, remaining on high alert. It was only once the buildings began to thin out, and they were back to walking on a road with open fields on either side, that they allowed themselves to relax somewhat. The crop looked like it might be wheat, though Dean had never had a strong knowledge of plants; every field they passed was overgrown, the crops leggy and unhealthy without people to harvest them.

They’d gone to seed twice, now, since the world fell apart, and just seeing the fields always made Dean’s stomach clench. He and Castiel were surviving on canned food and whatever else they could scrounge from grocery stores, right now, but they’d surely one day hit a point where they needed to start… farming? Rebuilding? Somehow beginning to produce their own version of a world again, instead of just picking over what was left of the old one. Reluctant vultures, the pair of them, circling over hollowed-out Walmarts and Targets.

That was a problem for another day, though. For now, they had to focus on getting to California alive, and finding Sam. They could play house later.

They could settle down. Somewhere quiet. Clear the place of no-brainers and keep up a decent fence, and they should be safe. Maybe they could grow things, and raise animals, and live like it was the freaking dark ages - a prospect that should have sounded terrible. But if it was with Castiel, Dean thought, at least it wouldn’t be too boring. It could even be - well, it’d be a life, of sorts. And Sam would be there. Maybe even a few other people they picked up on the way; after all, if Sam were alive, why not a couple more?

Dean was already half-smiling at the image of Castiel figuring out how to milk a cow.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did,” Dean pointed out, jerked out of his thoughts. He felt his stomach clench. If Castiel asked something about how - about the way that Dean felt about him -

He pushed the thoughts from his mind. Castiel could have no idea about any of that.

“Another question, then.”

Dean caught his eye, and gestured open arms, inviting Castiel to ask.

Castiel paused for a second, seeming to put his thoughts together. When he spoke, it was in carefully measured tones.

“It’s been two years,” he said. “And your brother - he was in California at the start. So… why didn’t you make it out there, yet? It’s far, but… by my calculations, allowing for delays, it shouldn’t have taken you a lot more than three months. Two, even.”

Dean swallowed. He’d been waiting for this question, if he was honest.

“It’s -” he began, and then cut himself off, not sure how to explain. “Well. Part of it is that - well - my brother and I, we always said, if the world went to crap one day then the safest place in the world is probably Canada.”

“You prepared for the apocalypse?” Castiel said, sounding amused. “And your plan… was Canada?”

“Fewer people,” Dean pointed out. “Big parks. Wide open spaces. We picked a spot on a map, said that’d be the place. Yeah, I went up there. Stayed there for a bit. Freaking cold, man. But we agreed that’s where we’d meet. So I stayed.”

Castiel had gone quiet. Dean suspected his cut-off sentences weren’t disguising the way it had felt to wake up, every day, in the desolate place they’d chosen, and wait for a brother who never came.

“Ran out of food,” Dean continued. “Eventually. And figured he wasn’t coming. So I came back down here. Checked the old place in Kansas where we grew up. Came further east, ‘cause we took a vacation one time ‘n’ Sam said that the basement in the hotel we stayed at’d make a good apocalypse bunker.”

Still, Castiel said nothing.

“Nada. Of course. So, now it’s off to Cali. I thought he wouldn’t have stayed put, s’why I didn’t go straight there. Thought he’d’ve been on the move. Now I’m thinking, he prob’ly met up with some people and decided to take care of ‘em. That’d be just like him. And he’d know I’d come find him.”

“He sounds like a good man,” Castiel said, breaking his silence at last. Dean snorted.

“Yeah, he’s alright. He’s a good kid.” He paused, and then added, “Tall as a damn house.”

His throat tightened. He usually didn’t allow himself to think of Sam like this - as a person, rather than a goal, a destination. It shook him, whenever he did. Reminded him that Sam was a human being, with all the vulnerability that implied.

“He’ll be OK,” he said aloud. “We’ll find him.”

He caught Castiel’s eye, half-challengingly.

Castiel only nodded, his gaze steady. They walked on.

***

“What’s with the t-shirts, anyway?” Dean asked, when Castiel pulled another one out of his pack and put it on, the movement quick and clinical in the cool morning light through the window of the little room they’d found to stay in, above an old bank in a little backstreet on the outskirts of a town.

Castiel looked down at his t-shirt, which said _La Vie est Belle_ in swirling, cutesy lettering.

“I like to be clean,” Castiel said. “I just wear a different t-shirt every day and that helps.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean said. He made a mental note to change his own shirt, which he’d been wearing for - a while, now. When he’d been on his own, hygiene hadn’t exactly been a big issue.

It shouldn’t really be, now, Dean thought. He didn’t need to impress Castiel or make himself more - what, more attractive to him? Why would Dean want that?

He avoided thinking about the answer to that question.

“What I meant was,” he continued, “the - you know, the -”

He gestured towards his own chest, forgetting the word for what he meant.

“Slogans?”

“That’s it. Them.”

Castiel tilted up a dry little smile.

“They make me happy,” he said. “It kept me going, before I met you. Collecting t-shirts with these slogans that just…” He shrugged. “Well. We could have our brains digested. And life is beautiful, right?”

Dean snorted.

“And that kept you going?” he said.

“That, and the hope that I might someday find my Prince Charming.”

It was said so sardonically that Dean couldn’t believe for a moment that Castiel really meant it. Even still, he felt his heart lurch dangerously in his chest, and before he could stop himself, he said,

“I’m pretty charming.”

“Oh, you are?” Castiel said. Dean, internally cursing himself, decided to commit to it now that it was already out of his mouth.

“Yep. Definitely.”

“Well, let me know when,” Castiel said. “I’ll make sure to swoon next time.”

Who even used the word ‘swoon’, Dean thought, as they set off on their way. Who even spent their time collecting strange ironic t-shirts during the apocalypse while avoiding the dead and drinking herbal tea? Who did that?

Dean could feel shifts and changes, the rise of a feeling that he didn’t want to give a name to. He tried to focus on the road, on the sound of his own footsteps, on his plan for the future.

All he could see was Castiel, walking slightly ahead of him. All he could hear was the sound of their footsteps, almost synchronised. All he could see in his future - the only thing that seemed even slightly certain - was Castiel waking up tomorrow, and saying, _hello, Dean._

And that didn’t seem so bad. Looking at Castiel, and trying his best to keep his feelings wordless, Dean thought that maybe that didn’t seem so bad at all.


	9. Chapter 9

Later that night, Castiel twisted open a bottle of whiskey and poured a neat two fingers’ worth each into two cups.

“The hell?” Dean said, taking the green plastic cup that Castiel offered him and looking down at its contents suspiciously. “Is this, like, actually apple juice?” He’d stopped drinking so much, recently, and Castiel had seemed far happier ever since. 

The sickness and the stupidity of drunkenness was the reason that Dean had stopped drinking, though, Dean told himself. Castiel himself had nothing to do with it.

“I thought it might be companionable to share a drink,” Castiel said, sitting down beside Dean. They’d managed to find themselves a little place out in the back end of nowhere, a two-storey colonial-style place with a veranda and a fire pit. With no towns for at least three miles in any direction and good visibility, Dean had agreed to setting a small fire; they sat on the edge of the veranda, now, facing the little circle of flames.

It was stupid to light a fire, but Dean kept his blade by his hand. Castiel, too, had a weapon - just a serrated knife, not too big. They were still on the lookout for something better.

“Where’d you even get it?” Dean said, taking a sniff of the drink. He tried not to be too intensely aware of how close Castiel was - close enough for Dean to lean over and bump their shoulders together, if he’d wanted to.

Or rather, if he’d allowed himself to. The wanting wasn’t what was lacking.

“When we stopped for food at that Kmart, a couple of days back.” Castiel leaned in slightly, and tapped their cups together. The plastic made a soft noise, an almost-clink, that made Dean huff a little laugh.

“Fancy as hell,” he said, and took a small sip. “Oh, hey. Wow. You took the expensive stuff.”

Castiel gave him an odd look.

“It’s free,” he said.

“Yeah, I know. I just always took the cat’s piss. It felt more right. Kind of appropriate.”

“You do know that you deserve good things, Dean, don’t you?”

The question came out of nowhere; Dean half-spluttered on his next sip of whiskey and thudded himself theatrically on the chest, trying and failing to react with some semblance of grace.

“Dude,” he said. “Come on. We’ve gotta be at least half the bottle in before you start talking shit like that.”

Castiel said nothing; he just looked at Dean - looked right at him, into his eyes, for a long couple of seconds - and then turned towards the fire, one side of his mouth crooked up in a small smile.

Dean took the opportunity to watch him for a few moments. Castiel took a sip of his whiskey, thinning his lips against the harsh strength of it in his mouth. He swallowed, and the fire-shadows shifted on his throat.

Clenching a fist, Dean shifted slightly. It would have been so, so easy to lean in and press a kiss to Castiel’s throat. To press his fingertips to Castiel’s chin and guide their lips together. To entwine their hands, soft at first and then tight, hard, as they kissed on and on and felt heat stoking between them -

Dean’s lips, his cheeks, his arms and neck and chest, they cried out to be touched. Castiel kept looking into the flames, and Dean sat and burned beside him.

“Hey,” he said, to because he could only stand to immolate without distraction for so long.

“Mmm?”

“What’s a weird thing you miss?”

Castiel’s blue eyes shifted to rest on Dean again, gentle and questioning. Dean saw this expression so rarely, but it was one of his favourites: the quietness of it, the kindness.

“From before?”

“Yeah.”

Castiel considered. It took him some time, and a couple more small sips of whiskey.

“My library,” he said, eventually.

Dean wasn’t hugely surprised; he could imagine Castiel as a reader. He had a kind of thoughtfulness about him, and a settledness - an introspective hush.

“Makes sense,” Dean said aloud. “Was it near where you lived?”

“Yes. I had a two-minute commute to work, walking. I had a house of my own.” The longing in his voice was palpable.

“Commute?”

“To the library, yes.”

Dean went still. Surely - surely Castiel couldn’t be saying what it sounded like he was saying.

“Hold up,” he said. Castiel blinked at him, questioning. “You - you worked… ?”

“At the library,” Castiel said. “Yes.”

“You were - a  _ librarian _ ?”

“Yes,” said Castiel, sounding utterly confused by the astonishment in Dean’s voice - and Dean started to laugh, he couldn’t help it. Castiel’s head tilted to one side, and Dean only laughed a little harder.

“What?” Castiel demanded, his eyes bright, his mood matching Dean’s sudden humour; Dean shook his head. 

“All this time,” he said, “I thought you were freaking  _ military. _ ”

“A soldier? Me?” Castiel said, his eyes narrowed with scepticism. “Dean, I didn’t kill anything until - until just recently. You know that.”

“I know! It’s just…” Dean tried to trace back through his own thought process, find where this mistake had started. “I don’t even know, dude. First time I saw you, you were standing with your back all straight and looking so - I don’t know - professional. And when we sweep buildings, and towns -”

“Well, I read about it,” Castiel said haughtily. “I just do it like they did in books.”

He looked so indignant, the firelight playing across his face. 

And without any warning, Dean’s heart felt suddenly swan-dive heavy, and his brain said,  _ holy shit, I’m in love with you. _

Dean went still.  _ Christ.  _ He'd thought it. His eyes swept over Castiel's face, and Castiel blinked back.

All this time, and Castiel hadn’t been a soldier. Hadn’t had training. Hadn’t been taught how to stand and walk and run, and check through a house for hostile presences. Hadn’t been taught how to use a weapon.

Had just been a small-town librarian - with his own house - making it up as he went along.

And he’d saved Dean’s life.

Castiel watched him, and Dean stared back, and knew he was in love. 

God.

He’d blown it. He’d thought it, now. He didn’t have any idea if Castiel could ever feel the same way - if Castiel were even into guys, at all - but now he’d looked at Castiel and thought it out loud, in his head. Pushing away the thoughts wouldn’t work anymore. Pretending it was just touch-lust, just his skin wanting to press against skin, wouldn’t work anymore.

Castiel was a goddamn librarian. Dean’s chest felt the pull of a stronger gravity: his heart, weighted, thudding, so real and present and clearly directed that it was unavoidable. Irrepressible. Undisguisable.

He was in love.

He took another long, long draught of whiskey, and swallowed it down like medicine.

Castiel cleared his throat.

“I didn't realise that would be a revelation,” he said lightly. Dean managed another laugh, and shook his head. 

“You don't even know.”

He clamped his lips shut. That sentence had been too far. Castiel’s expression was shifting to puzzlement, and Dean didn't want to give any answers; hurriedly, he said,

“So, Mister Librarian. What was your favourite book?”

Castiel smiled slightly, looking down towards the fire, accepting the diversion without pushing back.

“Well,” he said. “It depended on the day.”

“What? You didn't have, just, one constant favourite?”

Shaking his head, Castiel lifted a shoulder in a shrug. Most of his whiskey was gone, now, and the movement was a little looser than usual. God, Dean wanted to push the shirt off that shoulder and kiss the skin, bite it.

“Some days it was Pride and Prejudice. Some days it was 1984. Some days it was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Some days it was The Count of Monte Cristo. I just loved them all, so much. The characters. The settings. I could never just choose one.”

“What about today, then?” Dean said.

Castiel swallowed.

“Today… even just thinking about books makes me feel lonely,” he said. “Like remembering a person you loved in a dream.”

The fire crackled into the silence.

“I think mine is  _ On the Road, _ ” Dean said eventually, and Castiel smacked him on the arm.

***

And now, it was deep in the heart of the night. The blackest skies were veined in cloud overhead, and a cool wind flowed over the fields. The fire was long since out.

The old house where Dean and Castiel were sleeping groaned. Outside, a solitary dead woman walked past. She grunted and rasped to herself as she moved, slow and shambling; Dean heard her in his dreams, and his hand twitched for his blade - soon, though, she’d passed unknowingly by.

An hour passed, and then another. Dean’s sleeping consciousness was wrapped around the image of Castiel, his chest heaving, right after he'd just saved Dean's life -

“ _ No!” _

Dean jerked awake to the sound of a shout. Blind in the darkness, he reached for his blade - found the handle unerringly - before he woke up enough to realise that there was no one in the room except himself and Castiel. 

It was Castiel who had cried out.

They were lying top to tail on the floor; the only bed in the place, a big queen with a memory foam mattress, had had a dark pile of ragged clothing stained iron red in the centre. Neither Dean nor Cas had felt quite up to touching it and finding out what exactly it was.

So it was in the darkness of an unfamiliar dining room that Dean sat up to peer through the gloom at Castiel, whose face and hands were twitching in his sleep. He was sheened over with sweat. His mouth was moving; Dean waited, wondering if the nightmare would pass on its own.

“No,” Castiel said. “No, no, no, no… please…”

Dean didn’t know whether to reach out and shake him, or say his name, or let the dream take its course. Sometimes a bad nightmare, and its eventual resolution - the final defeat of the terror - could even be a good thing. At least, in Dean’s experience.

“No - please - mm’give me a chance -”

This one didn’t look to be shifting, though.

Dean got to his feet. Earlier, before they’d gone to bed, he’d noticed a tall candelabra standing on the dining room table - probably silver, by the tarnished look of it. Something that would have been worth a lot of money - something that would have raised its owner’s chin a little higher when having guests round for dinner, in the old world.

In the new world, it was good for lighting up a dark dream, and not a lot else.

Dean struck a match out of the matchbox left beside the candelabra, and lit the three long candles that stood tall in their silver holders - little pale proud waxen soldiers that didn’t realise their generals were all dead, their fine-dining battlegrounds long-since abandoned.

Gripping the candelabra in a hand that was still a little clumsy with sleep, Dean went back to sit down by Castiel, who was mumbling incomprehensibly into the sweater he was using as a pillow.

He set the candles down by Castiel’s side, between the two sleeping nests they’d built for themselves - and then took a look at Castiel’s twitching, dream-panicked hands, and frowned. He picked up the candelabra again, and leaned forwards to place it a little way above Castiel’s head, out of the danger zone.

After a pause, he lay down beside Castiel. His eyes were too heavy to stay open long, but he didn’t want to return to his place by Castiel’s feet and desert Castiel to face his nightmares alone.

The candlelight flickered and wavered gently. Castiel’s face was easing; the lines across his forehead softened. His mouth stopped shaping noiseless pleas, and relaxed. Dean watched him for a little bit, his eyelids dropping heavily - but Castiel was so - in the candlelight, he looked so -

He should blow the candle out, he knew, before he slept. It was no good chasing away nightmares if he set the house on fire at the same time. But just as he was about to sit up, Castiel murmured,

“Dean?”

Castiel’s eyes were still closed. His breathing was a little loud, and rhythmic. He was still asleep.

Dean’s breath caught in his chest. He said, almost too quietly to be heard,

“I’m here.”

“Dean?” Castiel was frowning again, the corners of his lips turning down. Instinctively, without thinking it through, Dean leaned across and wrapped his hand around Castiel’s.

“I’m here,” he said again.

At the touch, Castiel’s worries seemed to drop. His face smoothened, and his shoulders relaxed. His hand, though, gripped Dean’s tighter.

“I’ve got you,” Dean said softly, and Castiel hummed deep and quiet.

When Dean fell asleep, it was with the candles still burning - and his hand wrapped in Castiel’s, fingers intertwined. Their dreams were golden; they were lit up from within.


	10. Chapter 10

When Dean woke, his hand was still in Castiel’s. Opposite him, Castiel was sleeping - his mouth slightly open, his cheek pressed up against his sweater. He let out a little huffed, contented snore, and Dean couldn’t hold in a smile.

Their hands, pressed together in the morning light. Dean couldn’t help but stare at them. It was a miracle - it felt like a true miracle of the old and biblical kind. Somewhere, on another plane, this simple palm-to-palm was explosions and violins and choirs singing. It was ground-shaking, terrifying, awesome.

On this plane, though, it was quiet. As quiet as steady breaths and heartbeats. 

There was a little sweat between their fingers where they interlocked. Dean couldn’t help but marvel even at the feeling of that - the heat of another person’s skin on him.

On another morning, with this being Castiel, it might have made him warm in different places. On this morning, though - the morning after he’d fallen in love - it only filled him with awe. It only made his heartstrings tug.

He drew in a sigh, and let it go. With Castiel sleeping, Dean could imagine, could picture - had the space and silence to fantasise. He kept his eyes on Castiel, and he could see it all.

Castiel would open his eyes, and say,  _ Hello, Dean.  _ And then he’d lean in for a kiss, because they were together, and that’s what people who were together could do.

And Dean would kiss back. And they’d move closer, move against each other. Eventually, Castiel would pull away and say,  _ Dean, why are we on the floor in the dining room? We need to get up and get ready. Didn’t you remember your brother is coming over for dinner?  _

It was a fantasy, after all.

And Dean would pull him back in, and say,  _ Five more minutes. _

Looking at Castiel’s soft, sleeping face, Dean could see it so clearly. Too clearly. He pulled his hand away from Castiel’s, and sat up - killing the dream himself, before Castiel could wake up and look confusedly at their interwoven hands, and kill it for him.

Castiel didn’t like killing things, after all.

***

“Dude, it was Pantene.”

“It  _ wasn’t. _ It was Head and Shoulders.”

“Pan _ tene. _ ”

“Head and  _ Shoulders.” _

“You were a librarian, man!”

“So?”

“So, what would you know about TV commercials? They’re not books.”

Castiel gave Dean a withering look.

“I was a librarian, not a hermit. I watched TV sometimes.”

“Uh huh. Sure,” Dean said, as sarcastically as he could.

“Dean -”

“Come on. We all know that librarians eat books, sleep on books, raise books as their own children… just admit it. You never even saw a TV in your life.”

Castiel rolled his eyes, but it was done fondly enough - Dean could see the smile caught around his lips.

They were back on the road, the two of them striding out confidently, the days passing easily. They kept their eyes sharp, but there was no movement out here in the fields; the only sound was the rustling of the crops. At one time in his life, Dean might have found it freaky - the silence, except for the swaying of the corn. Now, he found it comforting. Dead silence was too much, noise was too dangerous; this was the happiest medium he could imagine.

“Do it again,” Castiel said.

“Huh?”

“The commercial. Do it again.”

Dean composed himself, turned away from Castiel, and then peeked sultrily over his shoulder. Walking backwards, he said,

“What’s her secret?” He winked, flipped some imaginary hair. “Wouldn’t YOU like to know.”

Castiel turned away, but Dean still saw the smile on his face that he was trying to hide. Dean himself grinned down at the ground as he turned to walk forwards again, feeling suddenly shy.

“It’s definitely Head and Shoulders,” Castiel said.

“Dude. It’s  _ Dove  _ more than it’s Head and Shoulders. You know, they used to have the kind of swoopy little logo -”

“No,  _ that’s  _ Pantene.”

“Different kind of swoop. That was like… lines. I’m talking about an actual bird, here.”

They bickered onwards, disagreeing with each other thoroughly and satisfyingly as they made progress through the fields. Eventually, on the horizon, there appeared a dark shape - one that Dean recognised as an upcoming town.

“We’re going round it,” Castiel said.

“Why? We need food.”

Castiel shook his head.

“You and food,” he said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Dean said. “Did you not enjoy the meal I made last night? Would Sir have preferred his dinner with a little less delicious canned fruit and a little more  _ essence of the air? _ ” Dean made sure to give the last few words a terrible French accent, just to really amp up the irritation.

“If we go to that town, one of us might get killed,” Castiel said bluntly. Dean sighed.

“You’ve got that thing, now,” he said, jerking his head towards Castiel’s right hand. In it was gripped the handle of a long blade, similar in size and sharpness to Dean’s own; they’d finally found the tools to make it on a farm a couple of days back, after too long spent with Castiel switching out kitchen knives for progressively more dangerous weapons they found along the way.

They never took guns, though. Too noisy.

“I don’t know how to use it properly,” Castiel said. “Not yet.”

Dean decided not to remind Castiel of the time when he’d used a blade very effectively indeed, and saved Dean’s own life. The topic still seemed too raw to bring up, for several reasons.

“Look at it this way,” Dean said. “We go. Either you die, so you don’t even know what happened. Or I die, and then you have one less problem to deal with.”

Dean kept his tone light as he said it, but Castiel still responded - too quickly, too sharply - with,

“I don’t want you to die.”

Blinking once, Dean decided to ease the tension, and snorted. “Aw,” he said, putting his hand on his heart. “Would you miss me?”

Shaking his head, Castiel turned to look at him. Dean wiggled his eyebrows.

“You get used to people,” Castiel said, and that was that.

They passed by the town - but they went into a different one the next day, though. Not even Castiel could put off the craving for canned peaches for too long.

***

Two days later, they reached a town that had caved in - become a mouth that devoured itself, as seemed to be the way of things these days. The reek of gas was on the air long before they hit the place; Dean had wanted to go around it, but for once it had been Castiel arguing not to take the long detour across the wild crop fields. Castiel’s shoes had broken, and every step was agonising for him; his soles bled, no matter how he bound them up in rags every morning and tied his failing shoes on tightly. The trail of red they left behind was dangerous, he said.

“Dangerous for attracting no-brainers?” Dean had said, ready to argue that he’d never seen one of the dead acting like a bloodhound.

“Dangerously symbolic,” Castiel had retorted. “Two men left alive in the world, one of them walking on bleeding feet? This is verging on magical realism, to be honest, if we’re not careful.”

“And that’s… bad?”

“Well. García Márquez, for instance, wasn’t known for his happy endings.”

Dean had shaken his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but -” He’d glanced down at Castiel’s ruined feet, taken in the strained, stoic expression on Castiel’s face. “But fine. We’re going in.”

And so they’d headed into the town.

The stench of petroleum and smoke and charred rubber was overpowering. They picked their way into the town through rubble, which was still shifting and moving over itself, grumbling. There were no buildings taller than one storey high; Dean had seen scenes like this before. Some towns just got unlucky; it only took a few people having left the gas on before they turned, and a spark at the wrong time, to light up a place like the fourth of July.

The roads were barely visible under the mess, stones and pipes and shattered glass masking the tarmac that had been scarred by fire. Dean helped Castiel pick out a route that would be easiest on his breaking feet, avoiding the sharpest of the debris while also keeping a constant eye out for any no-brainers lurking around. The sudden rushing sound of rubble falling, near and far away, kept putting shivers up his spine.

“It can’t still be moving by itself, after all this time,” Castiel said. “Not this much. There must be no-brainers out there. Lots of them.”

“It’s just because the nights are colder here,” Dean said. “And the days are so hot. Everything is contracting and expanding. It never gets a chance to settle.” He squeezed Castiel’s shoulder as he helped him clamber over a fallen wall from a building that had collapsed completely. “It’s alright.”

They walked onwards, Dean supporting Castiel’s weight whenever he was allowed to, and trying not to let his thoughts linger on the press of Castiel’s body against his shoulder. The times when they touched had become more charged, more conscious; Dean felt as though Castiel might know, somehow, how Dean felt about him. Dean was doing his best to hide it - of course he was - but when there was only the two of them out here, only each other’s faces and hands and bodies to watch, he supposed it had to be hard to miss.

From Castiel himself, Dean was getting a feeling that he didn’t completely understand. Some kind of confusion. There was no obvious mutuality to his feelings, and that was the best that he could make out, so he didn’t lean into them and he tried not to act on them, even in the smallest of ways. He didn’t want to make Castiel uncomfortable being around him - he couldn’t think of anything more selfish than letting the way he felt make his hands linger and his eyes soften, until Castiel had to choose between the discomfort of being around Dean and the discomfort of loneliness.

And so he kept his mouth shut and he kept his eyes hard and he kept his touches simple and necessary.

“We’re not even going to be able to see where the shoe store is,” Castiel said, breaking into Dean’s thoughts with a note of despair in his voice. He was looking around at the broken town; they seemed to have hit the main street, but the store signs were mostly broken and charred beyond legibility, hanging off the shop fronts.

“We can just -”

Dean was cut off by the screech of nearby movement, a small avalanche of rock and metal crumbling to the will of gravity - they watched it fall from the far side of the street, dust cloud rising, moving slightly closer together by instinct rather than choice. The groan of the building giving way had Dean thinking of the night that the lonely house had fallen, with Castiel still inside, not so long ago. He swallowed hard, and tried to breathe steadily to slow his heart - but just before the landslide of cement stopped, there came a sound that had him gripping his blade tightly and raising it, eyes widening and lips pressing together in preparation for a fight.

It was a scream, of a kind. A thin, high-pitched wail - not human, that was for sure, but something definitely alive - that came right from where the rubble was just settling. Dean shared a glance with Castiel, who was already watching him.

“One of the dead?” he murmured. Dean frowned. He’d never heard one make a noise like that before, but with the way that vocal chords disintegrated, he guessed that any number of sounds were possible.

“Let’s go find out,” he said, and crossed the street at pace. The sound of the screaming wasn’t stopping, and it would only attract more no-brainers if it was allowed to continue. Making sure that Castiel was able to keep up on his damaged feet, Dean moved as quickly as he could; as he got closer, he could hear that the wailing was accompanied by a frantic kind of scuffling noise, as though something were scrabbling in the dust. With some trepidation, Dean clambered over some metal piping, pushed aside a fallen road sign - and there, trapped under the weight of a section of fallen wall, legs kicking and battering hopelessly at the cement, screaming in pain, was - a rabbit.

A little caramel-coloured thing, soft and long-eared, with its back leg trapped and the other three flailing. Its wails were only getting louder. They needed to be stopped.

“Dean, don’t -” Castiel said, as Dean approached it, his heavy boots stomping. He waved a hand to quiet Castiel as he bent down, blade in hand. His nearness only seemed to panic the creature more; its screams worsened, and its legs kicked out more viciously.

Dean brought his blade up, and he heard Castiel shift behind him - and then he set it down on the floor beside him, within easy reach. And he reached out, and put a gentle hand on the rabbit’s hindquarters, and said,

“Heyyyy, heyyyy.”

The rabbit, apparently shocked into stillness by the sound of his voice, went limp under his palm, and stopped crying. Dean moved his thumb, stroking it gently. Its little lungs were panting frantically, its heartbeat erratic and skittering. Dean could see the panic in its eyes.

Not too long ago, Dean would have stopped long enough to put the creature out of its misery, and then moved on.

Now -

He braced his hand against the rock on top of it, testing its weight. There was a little resistance, but nothing was resting on it; Dean wrapped his hand more carefully around the rabbit to stop it from struggling and hurting itself more when he lifted the rock away, and put his back into it, and heaved.

The rock rolled away; Dean caught the rabbit mid-leap, bringing both hands to wrap around its little shaking body. He could feel the slick of blood from its mangled leg, and gripped tighter.

“Heyyyyy,” he said. “Heyyyy. There we go. There we go.” He drew the words out, soft and slow, holding the little creature tight to his chest. It was too docile in his arms, and too exotically-coloured, too, for it to have ever been wild, Dean realised. This rabbit had been a pet, before the world fell.

Most pets had already died off, or had made themselves so independent that seeing a human made them shrink away; in the two years since everything had changed, Dean had seen fewer and fewer dogs and cats. Little rodents - well, they’d mostly been trapped inside cages anyway, Dean thought now. Poor things wouldn’t have stood a chance without someone to feed them. Maybe this one had been a house rabbit, who had just got lucky until today.

He stroked its soft ears.

“It’s okay,” he said, as the creature began to struggle against his hold. “It’s okay -”

But with a powerful kick from its one working back leg, the rabbit pushed out of his grip, gave a cry of pain as it landed on its bad leg - and ran.

“No -” Dean grabbed for it, but with the adrenaline of injury the creature moved too quickly. Dragging its broken hind leg behind it, it disappeared out of sight into the building that had just collapsed. 

After a few seconds, Dean realised he was still sitting with his hands outstretched after it, and dropped them to the floor. The cement above them groaned.

“We need to get out of here,” Castiel said. Dean turned to look at him, and saw that Castiel’s expression was - was different somehow. He was looking at Dean with something that seemed like confusion, but raw - intimate, in a way that Dean wouldn’t have been able to explain. Dean swallowed. He could still feel the beat of the rabbit’s heart against his own.

“You tried,” Castiel said, seeing Dean struggling.

Dean lifted a shoulder, and tried for a smile. “Doesn’t matter, does it?” He turned back to look at the gap that the rabbit had disappeared into. “It’s gonna die in there anyway. The leg’s too bad.”

He heard Castiel come closer, and then a hand was placed on his shoulder. Silently, Castiel stood beside him. 

Dean tried to breathe normally, but he could feel gasps inside him, constricting his throat.

“First few months,” he said, in a low voice, “I tried to save - everything. Everyone. But they all -” His voice broke. He took a moment to collect himself, grateful to Castiel for not speaking into his silence. “It never matters,” he said. “What I do. It never matters. They all died anyway. I gave up.”

There was a long pause. Dean could hear the drips of water leaking out of a pipe, somewhere.

The hand on Dean’s shoulder tightened.

“We all die anyway,” Castiel said. Dean looked up at him, and saw that the confusion was gone from Castiel’s face. Instead, his eyes were soft - so soft, and clear. They saw him true. “That doesn’t mean what we do for each other isn’t worth trying.”

“It doesn’t matter, though,” Dean said. “None of it matters.”

Castiel came around to stand in front of Dean, and held out his hand.

“It matters,” he said. “Look at me. It matters.”

Dean watched Castiel’s face. He could see the difference there. The way that Castiel’s gaze felt on him now, it was like a tragedy, like a comedy, like a history - the meaningfulness and meaninglessness and sheer oldness of it, the complexity of it and the smallness of the shift from before, they washed over Dean like a wave of clean water. And then Castiel’s palm brushed lightly over his hair, and pushed away some of the dust in it. And the motes of it hung in the air, lit up by the sun, golden and bright. And the rocks around them were heavy and glittering and the smell of petroleum was still strong and somewhere in the building in front of them, a little rabbit was alive.

For a single, heart-piercing moment, Dean felt as though he understood completely why none of it mattered, and why all of it mattered. Mattered  _ so much. _ Why the rabbit was going to die, and yet everything hinged on the life of the rabbit. Why he was going to die, and Castiel was going to die, and the world was going to be empty and quiet and crumble to dust along with their bones in the sun with no one to bury them - but here, in this place, the world turned around them and only them and the choices they made.

He stood up, taking Castiel’s hand and letting himself be helped to his feet.

There were lives he couldn’t save and problems he couldn’t fix, and then there was what was in front of him.

“Let’s find you some shoes,” he said.


	11. Chapter 11

“Come on, come back inside.”

“Dean, there’s still plenty of light left. We could make it to the next town today. We -”

“We aren’t walking anywhere on those feet for another day or so. Don’t think I didn’t see the state of ‘em when you were changing your shoes. They’re all torn up underneath. How’d you keep your feet soft enough to tear in the damn Apocalypse?” The question was asked good-naturedly, and Castiel unbent a little. 

They were standing outside a little bungalow on the edge of the town, the yard separated from all the others by a barbed-wire fence that went over head height and ran the full length of the perimeter of the property, without gaps. Dean, spotting it half an hour earlier, had offered up thanks to the spirit of whatever paranoid curmudgeon had constructed it, and swung open the gate with some difficulty, reaching in to unbolt it through the barbs and spiking himself a couple of times.

Inside, the place had been nice enough. With all the security, Dean had expected to find a no-brainer in their usual sweep - someone who’d tried to outlast the terrors with wire fencing and eventually expired from hunger or thirst or simply loneliness - but there hadn’t been one. Instead, they’d found a nice house, tidy and homely, if a little dusty. There were canned foods in all the cupboards and a little gas stove with several full canisters of gas, and - most miraculously - a vegetable garden out the back, with actual vegetables growing rampantly. Carrots, potatoes, cabbages as big as a head, and more. Dean had made up his mind immediately that they were going to stay here long enough to let Castiel’s feet heal up.

Now, though, Castiel was standing outside the bungalow and making things more difficult than they needed to be, as usual.

“We don’t need to stop,” he said. “I’m fine. I have the new shoes. I can walk.”

“You’ll ruin ‘em if you bleed in ‘em,” Dean said gruffly. “What are you rushing for, anyway?”

Castiel looked at him strangely.

“Your brother,” he said. The sun was shining down on him, and he was screwing up his face to see Dean clearly.

Dean swallowed. His brother, yes.

His brother.

Dean said, “He’s survived out in Cali this long. He’s probably sippin’ margaritas on the beach. Come on, get in here. We can leave when it doesn’t hurt you to walk.”

Castiel sighed, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and - involuntarily - winced. Dean raised his eyebrows.

“Fine,” Castiel said. “Fine.”

They headed back inside together. As they did, they both went to walk through the door at the same time, and then both pulled back, and then both tried to walk again. Dean grinned, finding himself shy; Castiel smiled at the floor, and courteously gestured for Dean to walk first. He did so, feeling his fingers tingling. He turned around as soon as he was inside the doorway, and offered Castiel an over-the-top version of the same graceful gesture, ushering him in.

“Get those shoes off,” he said, as soon as they were in. “Come on. Socks too. We’ll put on some antiseptic and you can sit and do nothing. If you give me one of your teabags, I can even make you tea.”

“You don’t have to. I can manage just fine.” Castiel slung his backpack down on the ground, and hobbled into the lounge area, occasionally making a little hissing noise of pain. Dean followed him, bringing the pack along with him.

“But I’m here, though,” Dean pointed out. “Might as well put me to work. Otherwise I’ll end up having to read one of the books in here, and no one likes an educated member of the working classes.”

The walls were mostly covered in bookshelves, full of contents that seemed to range from trashy to epic. The walls were an elegant green, and the floor was hardwood with a musty rug in the centre. Castiel fell into one of the lounge chairs - the larger one, with space for two people to sit. Dean dragged up the coffee table from across by the armchair, and Castiel rested his feet on it after some pointed gesturing from Dean.

“Okay,” Castiel said. “But I’m cooking dinner.”

“You just try. I haven’t cooked with fresh vegetables in nearly two years. I will fight you for this right.”

Castiel, pushing off his shoes and peeling off his socks - already red and stained, the both of them, even though they’d picked them up fresh from the battered old shoe store they’d managed to find in town - gave Dean a soft look.

“Maybe we can do it together,” he said. And Dean was shy all over again. 

“Sounds alright,” he said.

There was something about touching Castiel’s feet - the sensitivity of them, the way that Castiel flinched when Dean brushed against his toes too lightly, ticklish - that had Dean biting his lip and shifting on the floor, trying not to linger on thoughts of the way his skin was on Castiel’s skin in this strangely intimate place. Thoughts of the careful delicacy of his own strong, clumsy fingertips, rubbing antiseptic gently into Castiel’s touch-attentive soles.

They didn’t speak as Dean worked, and perhaps that made it worse. 

Or better. Perhaps it made it better, when Dean looked up and saw Castiel watching him like that.

Dean cleared his throat.

“Can I go in your pack and get the tea?” he said. Castiel made to move, and Dean held up his hands. “Aah-aah, you stay where you are. Ruin all my good work, I don’t think so.”

“Let me get the tea out of my pack,” Castiel insisted, a little grumpily. “I know where it is.”

Dean hefted the bag onto the seat beside Castiel, and waited through the sounds of rummaging. When a teabag was produced - wrapped in paper that said  _ Chamomile and Honey  _ in swirling letters - Dean took it, and leaned down towards Castiel before leaving; he’d done it without thinking, and his brain only caught up with the fact that he was going to absently peck Castiel on top of the head before going to make the tea, when he was already halfway through the motion. He pretended quickly to rub at his own back, making a face as though it were paining him, just to explain why he’d leaned over.

“Are you alright?” Castiel said. “You should have some tea, too. Chamomile and honey can help with pains. Here.” He held out a second teabag. Dean, unable to think on the spot of a good reason not to drink it other than explaining that his pain was faked, took the teabag and went to heat up the water.

It was an evening Dean wouldn’t forget. He made the tea and took it through to Castiel, whom he discovered nosing through one of the books - something Dean hadn’t expected, after Castiel telling him before that even the idea of reading a book made him feel lonely. 

“You better not have got up to get that,” he said warningly, handing Castiel a steaming mug.

“It was behind my head,” Castiel protested, pointing at the bookshelves directly behind him.

They drank their tea in companionable quiet, talking occasionally about Castiel’s book -  _ The Count of Monte Cristo,  _ one of Castiel’s old favourites, if Dean remembered correctly. The tea itself, Dean found absolutely disgusting - but he sipped it down without complaining. He was sitting on the chair next to Castiel, and their shoulders were brushing, and Castiel seemed as aware of the touch as Dean was. Something between them had shifted, since the rabbit. Dean, attuned to Castiel’s body, found it angled towards him - found Castiel looking for excuses to lean a little closer, touch him for a moment.

It made his heart thud painfully in his chest.

They cooked dinner together in the kitchen; the antiseptic on Castiel’s feet had dried, so Dean begrudgingly allowed him to come into the kitchen and chop up vegetables for him to fry in an old pan he found in a cupboard. The scent of them cooking was enough to turn their eyes into saucers. Without any oil, they came out blackened in places - but Dean and Castiel inhaled them, the sweetness and freshness making Dean’s knees go weak. Onions, carrots, green beans, tomatoes - the flavours broke over Dean’s tongue, and he found he wanted to cry. When he looked over the table at Castiel, he saw the same expression reflected back at him.

Afterwards, their stomachs aching from the acids in the vegetables, they sat in the lounge and lazily let afternoon become evening. And just as darkness was beginning to fall, Dean caught sight of it; there, in a half-open cupboard under a bookshelf. A wind-up gramophone.

It was dusty and old but when Dean cranked it and set it going, it started to spin just as it should. Castiel, who was dozing on the sofa, woke up blearily to the sounds of a deep bass overlaid with the crackle of the record.

“What’s that?” he said, looking immediately awake, sitting forwards. His feet already seemed better, Dean thought, judging by the unconscious way Castiel rested some weight on them now. 

“This?” Dean said, snapping his fingers in time to the beat. “This is Ben E. King, dude. This is a classic. To be honest, this person mostly had, like, Tchaikovsky in their collection so I just went with something I know.” 

“I like it.”

“You like it?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm-hmmm. God, does it sound good.”

The bass was still rolling, plucked by clever fingers and recorded by clever devices. And now, being played at dusk, at the end of the world.

_ When the night has come, _

_ And the land is dark… _

Dean closed his eyes, letting the music fill him up. It had been so long since he’d heard a song, any song, and this was one of the greats. Even through the old gramophone, it sounded beautiful. The sound of a person singing sounded beautiful. For the second time that evening, Dean found tears rising up inside him, and put his hands on his hips and breathed deeply to try to push them away.

“Dean?” Castiel got up, looking concerned.

_ And the moon is the only light we see, _

_ No, I won’t be afraid. No, I won’t be afraid… _

Dean opened his eyes, and found himself looking into Castiel’s eyes.

_ Just as long as you stand, stand by me. _

Castiel reached out, and brushed the back of Dean’s hand with his fingertips. Dean went still under the touch - the deliberate, gentle, inarguably caring touch of another person’s skin on his skin. A touch that Castiel had sought, not him. A shiver went through his whole body, and - slowly, so slowly - he turned his hand, and let their fingers slide over each other.

Castiel’s eyes were moving over Dean’s face - his neck, his chin, his cheeks, taking him in.  _ Look at me,  _ Dean thought, as the music played around them.  _ Look at me.  _ Castiel looked into his eyes, and their gaze held.

Quietly, Dean interwove their fingers more tightly, and placed his other hand just above Castiel’s hip.

“Does Sir ever dance?” he said. Castiel’s face was totally solemn, open, honest. Not a hint of irony, or sarcastic self-awareness.

“No,” he said, and then he put his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “But I could learn.”

Dean didn’t smile. Neither of them smiled. Slowly, in a new kind of silence, they began to sway in time to the music, Dean taking the lead - pressing his hand gently against Castiel’s body, guiding him. After some time, they moved closer in, and Dean was leading Castiel with his own hips, his own rhythm. When Castiel breathed, it was sweet. When Dean closed his eyes and tilted his head forwards slightly, Castiel met him, and their foreheads pressed together.

And they danced. They weren't particularly good at it.

And on the gramophone, Ben E. King sang like it was the last time. For all anyone knew, it was the last time, Dean thought. There might never be another night like this. With a little grimace, he pressed closer into Castiel, and Castiel pressed back.

_ So darling, darling, stand by me _

_ Oh, stand by me _

_ Stand by me, stand by me… _

When the song ended, they went to bed, together. And slept half-held by each other, not quite in each other’s arms, and not quite out of them - but facing each other. They slept the whole night facing towards each other.

_ And that matters, _ was Dean’s first thought as he woke.  _ As much as anything else, that matters. _


	12. Chapter 12

The house kept them safe as the day passed. They made breakfast together - Castiel insisted on them having some canned food, so that their stomachs wouldn’t turn against them with the sudden richness of the fresh vegetables. Dean made regular checks on the outside perimeter, but there was no movement beyond the wire fence.

He didn’t allow himself to relax, exactly - he’d done that once too often, and it had almost cost him his life - but he let himself breathe a little easier. The place felt good, felt secure, and he allowed it to soothe him.

“What’s your favourite movie,” Castiel said, as they drank tea on the sofa. Their knees were touching. They weren’t talking about it, and it was all Dean could think about.

“My what?”

“Your favourite movie. From before.”

Dean took a sip of his tea. It was an acquired taste, he thought, but maybe he was starting to get it. The floral sweetness on his tongue was light, clean, good. He saw why Castiel would want to drink it, when he was walking the world. Dean had drunk whisky to dirty himself down, to belong out there. Castiel, though. He’d been drinking this stuff, been waiting to belong somewhere better. 

“Movies,” Dean said thoughtfully, trying to focus. His mind was a canvas, and the only thing painted on it was a pair of knees, touching.  _ Movies. Movies.  _ What movies had he used to watch?

“Yes. You know, the moving pictures,” Castiel said dryly. Dean rolled his eyes, and thought harder. He’d loved some movies - there had been ones he’d watched over and over. He turned to Castiel, frowning.

“I don’t remember,” he said blankly. 

Castiel, catching his expression, reached for his hand; they sat quietly for a while, fingers intertwined.

“Details fade,” Castiel said. “It’s alright.”

“I’m just - I’m just spacing. They’ll come to me. There was one with… oh, God, I  _ loved  _ cowboy movies.”

Castiel snorted; when Dean looked at him questioningly, Castiel squeezed his hand and then let go. “Your face just lit up.”

“Dude, you don’t even understand. Yeah, yeah - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Now, there’s a great story. The Quick and the Dead, that was a good one - young Leo DiCaprio, you know, and I was at the right kind of age. Or, uh, Blazing Saddles - God, that’s right, it was Blazing Saddles, 1974. Spoof Western. Had Gene Wilder in it, of all people. And my brother and I used to quote this line at each other the whole time, we just heard it the first time and lost our minds, drove my dad crazy with it for weeks…” Dean couldn’t keep the smile off his face at the memory.

“What was the line?”

“Okay, so he just goes, ‘well, my name is Jim. But most people call me…” Dean paused for effect. “...  _ Jim _ .”

He tried to hold in his laughter, but just saying the line out loud was enough to make him start, a silent laugh shaking his chest. He could see his brother’s face, creased with laughter, tears running down his cheeks as they said it to each other for the thousandth time. Castiel watched, bemused, as Dean tried to get ahold of himself.

“Ahh, man. I don’t think I even rewatched it when I was older. Probably had a crap ton of terrible things in it, but I just remember that one line mostly. What a classic.”

“So, cowboy movies, then,” Castiel said.

Dean nodded. There was no way to deny it. The hats and the boots and the serapes - damn, the serapes - they did things to him.

“It’s the look,” he said. “But like, also - I don’t know. The way those guys  _ were.  _ The way their lives were just - they arranged shoot-outs, they shot to kill, and they actually turned up to those things. Can you imagine? That’s crazy. I remember thinking, your life’s gotta be worth more than something you can lose that way.” He shook his head. “But it was good shit.”

He let out a breath, remembering the feeling of sitting in front of those movies. Usually with his little brother, right there beside him.

Dean sat forward, and moved his knee away from Castiel’s.

“Dean?”

With a hard swallow, Dean shook his head.

“I miss when happy wasn’t complicated,” he said.

Castiel didn’t touch him, but he leaned forwards, too. After a pause, he said,

“Maybe it’s always been complicated.”

Dean frowned.

“What’s that supposed to mean? It wasn’t like before people started dying and then wanting to eat my head off my body that every smile came with a crap ton of messed-up shit, was it?”

“No, I know, I just -”

“Why’d you always have to try to fix things? This can’t be magically fucking fixed with a slogan from one of your t-shirts.” Dean had meant the second half as a joke to soften the harshness of his first question, but it came out wrong - still angry, only making things worse.

“I wasn’t trying to fix anything,” Castiel said, and his voice was calm in the way that Dean recognised as upset. Letting his shoulders drop, Dean tried to gain a hold on himself. After several seconds of pulling himself together, he said,

“I’m sorry. I just - it just -”

“It’s OK. I know.” Castiel wasn’t looking at him. All their lazy intimacy was gone.

“I’m fucked up,” Dean said, raw.

Castiel lifted a shoulder. “That’s OK.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not OK. This shouldn’t be happening.” 

“Of course it shouldn’t. But -”

“Oh, you got another smart, feelingsy thing to say?” Dean said, his hurt running away with his good sense. “You can’t just sit there and expect to be able to -”

“I'm not trying to say that what you feel isn't natural,” Castiel said. “Just -"

“Why don't you just let me actually  _ feel  _ it instead of trying to stick a band-aid on it every time, then? Just because you're so philosophical and chilled out, you can't expect me to -”

“Do you think you have the monopoly on feeling hard done by?” Castiel snapped. He looked up at Dean, now, and there was real anger in his eyes, an intensity that took Dean aback, melted his own frustration completely. The question was stark, unexpected, a knife stab. “Do you really? Do you think you’re the only one of the two of us who feels lost? You can be so - so wrapped up in your own problems. Do you think I’m being shallow when I try to talk to you about these things? Do you think I don’t really  _ get  _ how screwed up you are?” Castiel laughed, hurt and dry.

“Cas - I didn’t -”

But Castiel was  _ angry.  _ Dean could see it in the lines of his body.

“It’s the end of the world,” Castiel said. “And you know what? All of the worst moments of my life happened before everything changed. My family - do you know how much I envy you for having a sibling you  _ want  _ to believe is alive? My brothers - my mother - my father - every single one of them hated me. And kept me close. Control, it was all control. Everything I did was for them and all I wanted was for them to give me a chance. They never gave me a chance. And then after twenty-seven years I got free and I worked in a library,” Castiel’s voice almost snapped over the word, “and everything, everything was good. I had a world. I had people I trusted. People I loved. All those years of people telling me that  _ it gets better,  _ that I should smile more, that I should be grateful for what I’ve got - all those years finally got me into that library. And I loved it. You have no - you have no idea - how much I loved it.” Castiel pressed his lips together, hard. “And it was all taken away. Hell came back for me and this time it had teeth to go with the hunger.” 

He looked down at the floor; Dean watched him for several long moments, wordless in the face of the outburst, lost. 

Eventually, Castiel looked up into his eyes. “I won’t be sorry for trying to say something to help. I won’t be sorry for wanting you to be happy whether it’s complicated or not. I won’t be sorry for the things I think and I will say them out loud. The only way I know out of dark places is to feel your way with your hands and follow any light you see. So I try to give you a light. So  _ fucking  _ what.” The curse word was vicious coming out of Castiel’s mouth, harsh, astringent, unfamiliar.

“Cas -”

“Don’t,” Castiel said. “Just don’t.”

He faced away. Dean sat in silence for a long moment, his heart pounding, and then got up abruptly and left the room.

***

Dean walked in the yard for some time, lost in his thoughts - caught between anger and shame - until he heard the sound of the fence rattling, over by the vegetable patch. 

With his blood going cold, he realised that he’d left his blade inside. It was the first time he’d been out of doors without it in his hand for weeks, for months. 

He needed to see what was happening; if the no-brainer was coming for the house, he needed to know so that he could warn Castiel. The rattling sound didn’t seem to be slowing - it was possible that the dead person was just outside the perimeter, without having managed to find a way inside. Either way, he had to know.

On careful feet, making sure to be absolutely silent, he walked around the side of the house. Keeping close to the wall, he peered cautiously around the corner and looked towards the fence, expecting to see a no-brainer trying to get in. He was anticipating the foul glisten of open jowls, the croak of everlasting hunger - the nastiness of the world to be battering at their door again, no peace for long. After all, the vegetables and the gramophone and the books had all been too good to be true. Surely, Dean thought, as his eyes scanned the fence and zeroed in on movement, this was where the blood and horror reasserted themselves.

Instead, fifteen minutes and one devoured carrot later, he walked back into the lounge in the bungalow with something in his arms and, in a tight voice, said,

“I found the rabbit. It came back.”

They called her Ears, because she had two of them, and they were prominent. It seemed like reason enough. They didn’t choose the name; it simply came to Castiel’s lips as he took her and cradled her and hushed her, and Dean followed where Castiel led as he brought out the antiseptic and the bandages and tried to figure out how to splint her bad leg with a little wooden spoon he’d found in the kitchen.

They worked together, not looking at each other, until it was done and the leg was set and the wound was clean. Ears was left to sleep on the armchair. And Dean sat on the floor, and Castiel sat above him on the sofa, and looked at the wall.

“Cas,” Dean said softly, and as though he’d been waiting for the signal to begin, Castiel let out a breath and dropped his chin.

“I didn’t mean to have an outburst like that,” he muttered. “You have a right to feel upset without me trying to make it better if that’s what you want.”

“And where’s that gonna get me,” Dean replied. “Feeling crappy. Whisky and hopelessness.” He shook his head. “Nah. It doesn't feel good. You don’t try to shut me up, you just try to help. That shouldn’t…” He swallowed awkwardly. “Look, I - I don’t always wanna hear what you have to say and - and that doesn’t always make me the nicest person about it, when I’m - you know, when I’m thinking about the fact that we might not find - that when we go to California…” He closed his eyes, and tried to breathe. “I’m not making sense. I’m trying to say, I’m gonna mess up. Probably a lot. But I want you to say what you want to say and I want to try to hear it.”

Castiel lifted his head, and met Dean’s eyes. Behind them, on the armchair, Ears twitched in her sleep.

“Why?” he said.

Dean stared at him. 

_ Because I love you.  _ Too much.

_ Because there’s no one else to listen to.  _ Too little.

“Because it matters,” said Dean. And when Castiel’s expression didn’t shift, he said, “Because you matter. To me. That’s why.”

And their world went soft again. Soft as lightly touching hands. Soft as rabbit’s ears.


	13. Chapter 13

When they woke up the next morning, the cuts on Castiel’s feet were small and dry - well on their way to being mended. He walked around on them without pain. Dean wanted to wait another day; Castiel put on his shoes.

“It’s time to go,” he said. “The longer we stay, the less safe it is. You know that.”

And so they left. Dean took as many vegetables as would fit in his pack, and did his best to harvest some seeds; he was no kind of gardener, but he tipped them into the darkness of the inside of a glove all the same, and tucked them safely away at the side of his backpack.

Maybe one day, they’d find somewhere safe enough to stay that he could plant them, and grow vegetables. For him, and Castiel - and Sam.

And Sam. The thought came too slow. Dean could feel his hold on something that had kept him going for so long gently loosening, and it frightened him. Holding on meant he didn’t have to face anything; letting go would mean admitting to himself that he would never see - that he and Sam would never be -

Dean cleared his throat, and walked.

They kept up a steady pace, not too quick, and Dean was determined not to go too far all at once.

“For Ears,” Dean said. “She’s only small. She shouldn’t travel far. It’s not your feet I’m worried about, it’s her.”

Ears, who was resting happily in a little nest on the top of Castiel’s pack, didn’t wake up to give this the sceptical look it deserved. Castiel more than made up for it.

“How’d you think she found us?” Dean said, changing the subject.

“I think she followed us,” Castiel said. “Or she smelled the vegetable patch.”

“Maybe she’s actually a person in disguise as a rabbit, and she followed us for company,” Dean said.

“But she’s too shy to change back into human shape, because she’s embarrassed about having stayed as a rabbit for so long already.”

“Ears,” Dean said solemnly, “we accept that you like being a rabbit most of the time.”

“Please continue to take whatever shape you like best,” Castiel added.

“Marry me, Ears.”

“How do you know Ears isn’t already married?” Castiel asked.

“... damn.”

“Ears has a wife and three children, for all you know.”

“Rabbit wife? Or human wife?”

“Hmm. Chicken wife.”

“Oh!” Dean said, pleasantly surprised.

“It’s a strange relationship. They’re making it work.”

“I think it sounds… eggcellent.”

Dean beamed as Castiel groaned, shaking his head in exaggerated despair. They walked onwards, occasionally checking on Ears, who sometimes scuffled around a little in her makeshift nest, but mostly watched out over the passing fields, her nose twitching and taking in the scents. Dean snuck her pieces of carrot when he thought Castiel wouldn’t notice.

Castiel noticed, but allowed Dean to think that he was sneaky.

Dean knew that Castiel noticed, but the mutual pretence was warm and comforting.

It was when they were circumventing the next town, giving it a wide berth as Castiel preferred and taking the long route across the fields, that Castiel turned to Dean and said,

“Does it ever bother you?”

“Bother me?”

“That there could be people in there.”

Dean went quiet for a little while.

“I’ve thought about it,” he said. “Sure. I don’t know. I used to check in every house I could. But there was never anyone alive and I just got myself in trouble that way. I gave up on it.”

“You found me,” Castiel pointed out. “Didn’t that replenish any faith that there might be other people out there?”

Dean shrugged.

“Figured lightning doesn’t strike twice,” he said.

Castiel said nothing for a while, and then he said,

“There could be people. And we wouldn’t even know.”

“Do you want more people?” Dean said, the question popping out of his mouth before he’d had a chance to think it through. Castiel seemed to take it seriously, though.

“Well,” he said, “it went so well the first time.”

The back of his hand touched Dean’s wrist, just briefly.

And the thought got stuck in Dean’s brain, too. There could be people in the town they were passing. There could be people in the little abandoned sheds they were walking by. There could be people, everywhere, and they’d never know.

Two days later, Dean suggested setting the fire.

***

“I believe they call this ‘courting disaster’,” Castiel said, but he still threw another wooden chair onto the large pile of furniture and garbage that they’d managed to assemble.

Dean, busy liberally sousing the heap with gasoline, said nothing in response. Castiel left to go and get another chair.

The town where they’d stopped was a big one. For once, it had been Castiel, not Dean, who had been pushing them towards the gathering of houses on the horizon.

“There,” he’d said.

“You sure you wanna do this?” Dean had asked. Castiel, squinting against the sun, had looked over at him and then nodded.

“If there’s anyone out here,” he’d said, “they’ll see the fire.”

“They might not come. Fire attracts the dead. Anyone alive might stay away.”

“Or they might not,” Castiel had said. “There might be someone out there who needs help. Or who could help us. A whole group of people. They might come and find us.”

And so they’d headed for the town, and raided whatever houses they could get into easily for all the wood they could find, and built up a colossal mountain of flammable materials. Dean, who had lit bonfires before - though never one this big - had put himself in charge of safety at the precise moment that he’d caught Castiel holding a canister of compressed gas and a lighter, looking pensively at them both.

“I wasn’t going to -” Castiel had protested, when Dean had knocked them out of his hands.

“I am going to light it,” Dean had said, and stomped off to get more wood.

And now dusk was closing in, and it was almost time. Ears, who had watched the building process with some interest - occasionally trying to lollop after them both as they walked about, only to be firmly put back in her nest on top of Castiel’s pack with her bad leg carefully placed - was asleep. They’d need to change her dressing, soon, Dean thought. That was a job for later.

He drizzled a fuse line of gasoline some twenty feet from the mountain they’d built together, and then reached into his pocket for a lighter.

Castiel came to stand beside him.

“The plan,” Dean said, holding the lighter in his hand. “One more time.”

“If any of the dead come,” Castiel said, “I let you deal with them on your own if you can. If there are lots, I grab Ears and your pack and we try to get out of here. If you need my help, you’ll call for me, at which point I drop the packs and Ears in the safest place I can see and come help you.”

“And, the most important thing I said was…”

Castiel grimaced. “Save myself before the rabbit.”

“And?”

“And… before you.”

“I’m serious. If it looks like I’m not gonna make it and it’d be suicide to try to help me, just go. Let’s keep the body count as low as possible.”

Castiel said nothing for a long moment, and then he muttered,

“What are we doing. This is crazy.”

There was a pause.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Wanna do it anyway?”

Castiel looked at him, humour in his eyes - gallows humour, Dean thought, but it was enough to have him smile wryly in return.

“Why not?” Castiel said. “It’s the end of the world.”

And Dean grinned, the burn of recklessness in his eyes - and dropped the lighter.

***

The fire blazed, and blazed. They’d piled it up so high that it didn’t die, not even hours later, not even with all the gasoline sprinkled over it and accelerating it. At first, the two of them were on high alert, walking around the flames and watching out for movement - of people, or of the dead.

The dead came, of course. Alone, usually, though occasionally in pairs or in a trio. Dean put them down easily and cleanly, blade to the head.

After three hours, they’d stopped being on such high alert. Night had truly fallen; the fire flared against the dark, and they sat together quietly, and watched it. Dean still had a hand on his blade, of course. Castiel had a hand on Ears, petting her fur.

Their other hands were back to back, touching without holding.

“If other people come,” Dean said, and then stopped. He looked down at their hands, and then looked away.

Castiel’s hand moved; for a moment, Dean felt his chest chill over, thinking he’d said the wrong thing - but then their palms were together, and their fingers interlocked. Castiel met Dean’s eyes - steady, certain, true.

And it was answer enough.

“One good thing about - everything,” Castiel said, the sentence clumsy - neither of them had figured out a way to refer to the way that things were, yet, their language failing them, the scale of the wreck too much for words to be able to encompass. “One good thing is the sky.”

Dean looked up. Sure enough, up above them, the stars stood out - undimmed by the pollution of city lights, the sweep of them was stronger, deeper, more stunning than Dean could have ever hoped to see it before. He stared upwards for a long time, taking it in, his hand resting in Castiel’s. In front of them, the fire crackled and spat, its roar just starting to lower into a growl as it chewed through its fuel. It was so animal, so hungry, so desperate to survive, Dean thought. He wondered if the stars laughed at it - a tiny light, a light that, in its desperation to live, only threw itself furiously and hastily towards the dark that waited at its end when all the fuel was gone and time was up.

Dean said,

“Do you think this is the only fire on Earth, right now?”

“That depends,” Castiel said, “on if we’re the only people on Earth, right now.”

Dean stared into the flames.

The one place on Earth with human life, with light, maybe. And they were all chewing up everything they had, racing towards the end. The fire, eating up wood. The two of them, sitting in front of it, eating up hope. So much of their hope - for finding people, for not being alone - being torched and turned to ash in this one grand and terrible and foolish gesture.

And beside them, a rabbit, eating up a carrot that she had been given. Equally hungry. Equally important.

And behind them, growling and grumbling and hands all reaching, came the dead.

A horde of them. A few hundred yards away, and closing. Eating up nothing - taking in nothing - only dealing out that which they had too much of, only spreading themselves and what they were. Not alive enough to take, anymore. Not alive enough to need. All they could do was give, and all they had to give was death.

Dean heard them first, and stood up, and hefted his blade in his hand.

The foul yawps and screeches and groans rose, when they saw Dean and Castiel. Their pace quickened. There were so many of them - too many, Dean knew at a glance. Far too many. All walking with hands outstretched, hands that said _take this, take this, take what I am and be me._

Hands that said, _take this, take this, take what I cannot give away enough._

Hands that said, _take this, take this, I will make you take this._

Dean moved to stand in front of Castiel. In every line of his body, from his planted feet to his ready blade to the knives in his eyes and the mirthless grin on his face, he said, _come and try._

“Cas,” he said quietly. Castiel, who had been reaching for his own blade, stopped and looked up at him. “It’s time to run.”

“No -”

“There’s too many of them. They're moving fast. I can give you time.” The sounds of them were closer and closer. Ears, hearing their dragging feet, smelling their reek on the hot, thin air, gave a squeak and flopped out of Castiel’s bag, and dragged herself away into the shadows.

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Cas -” Dean’s grin dropped, his eyes filling with sudden fear when he saw the determined set of Castiel’s jaw, the hardness in his eyes, lit up by the fire. “Cas, don’t do this. You said you’d go.”

“I said I remembered _you_ said I should go. I didn’t say I would.” Castiel found the handle of his blade, and stood up.

“Cas…” Dean grabbed for his arm, roughly. “Get out of here. Just go. I want you to _live_.”

“And I don’t want to live,” Castiel replied, “without you.”

There was no time. The dead were on them, almost. Their hands pushing, pushing, pushing. Their shambolic feet rushing towards them. Mouths open.

“You’re too good to do this,” Dean said, trying to convey in as few words as possible what it would mean for Castiel - Castiel, who hated to kill - to stay and die in this bloodbath with him. How wrong that was. How far away from all this Castiel should be, with his book and his tea and a rabbit.

Castiel turned towards the horde, breaking out of Dean’s grip and fixing his eyes on the nearest of the dead.

“Good,” he said, “doesn’t matter to me. And if you’re going to die here, then I’m not going to die anywhere else.”

“Fuck you,” said Dean, furious, turning towards the no-brainers, hating them and hating the fire and hating himself and hating Castiel. He raised his blade, and Castiel matched him.

“I love you, too,” Castiel said, and the first of the dead reached them, and he swung.

***

Dean woke up from a dream where he’d killed the world, left everything covered in dark and blood - woke up, standing, to find it real.

At his feet, the dead. In his hand, a blade. In his lungs - vicious lungs, grating in and out the air he needed to live - smoke, and horror. He retched. He was covered in slick nastiness - he could feel it matting in his hair and dripping down his face.

And he was still, somehow, alive. He wanted to turn the blade on himself, felt dangerously close to it.

Not far away, the fire still burned. He’d been pressed back against its flames by the crush of the horde - had almost fallen back into its warm embrace, had wondered several times whether it would be better to just let himself be consumed by it rather than turned.

Of Castiel, there was no sign. Dean had tried to stay close enough to him to watch his back, and he had failed, failed, failed. He looked around and then looked again and then again, hoping Castiel would appear, coalesce into view out of the sparks of the fire or the smoke in the air.

Nothing.

They had started the fire knowing that this could happen. Dean himself had known that the dead would come. And yet they’d still lit the fire.

One of the dead, whom Dean had only beheaded and not ended, made a little pathetic noise in the back of its torn-up throat. Dean stood over it, and then stabbed at it - once, twice, and then again and again, furious, raging, destroying what he could in an effort to keep his blade facing outward.

Eventually, he stopped, panting, wetness on his face.

“I think you got it,” said a voice behind him.

And Dean turned.

And there he was.

Castiel. His face smeared over with soot and blood, his clothes ruined, his eyes full of horrors and his hand, on his red-dripping blade, looking rock steady.

“You’re alive,” said Dean.

Castiel breathed for second, his shoulders rising and falling, and then said,

“So’re you.”

Dean walked away from the fire, out of the circle of light, and into the quietness of the shadow and despite the dirt and the dead and the destruction. He dropped his blade, and it fell into ash and dirt with a metallic thud. He breathed out, and breathed in, and he brought his hands up to cup Castiel’s face, and - desperately, like he needed it, like it was the only thing that could possibly keep him alive and like he _wanted_ to live more badly than anything else - he kissed Castiel.

It was rough, and imperfect, and Castiel kissed him back.

And it was there, in the hardness and the fury and the anguish of it, in the way their brows were furrowed and they pressed into each other and demanded that the other push back, taking and taking from each other, taking what they needed. It was all there - the love of it all. The hopeless and foolish love of it all.

They let each other go, eventually.

And breathed. Forehead to forehead, wordless.

And kissed again - but this time, Castiel moved in softly. He pressed his lips to Dean’s, warmth and warmth, heartbreakingly tender in a moment of absolute violence.

“You should have left,” Dean said, speaking against his lips, not ready to move away.

Castiel said,

“You can’t imagine that I would love you and let you die on your own.”

The fire crackled and spat into the silence of their third kiss, long and steady.

“We need to go,” Dean said, when they broke apart. He picked up their blades and their packs. Castiel found Ears, shaking in the shadows.

Together, without a backward glance, they left the fire behind.


	14. Chapter 14

They held hands, after that. Often. On the road, and at night, and when they cooked and when either of them asked. They held hands, and it meant something different each time.

Perhaps, _I’m sorry we didn’t find anyone else with the fire, but I’m glad you’re here._

Perhaps, _don’t hate yourself, don’t hate yourself._

Perhaps, _my hands are cold._

Each reason was a good reason, Dean thought. And sometimes it was easier to speak in hands than in words.

Three weeks after the night of the fire, they found a place to sleep that was fancier than the usual places. From the outside, it had looked like a regular farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere - but on the inside, they discovered a modern-style grandeur that had them turning to each other with wide eyes and smiles at the edges of their mouths.

“Not bad,” Dean said.

“Not bad at all.”

After a thorough sweep, they unpacked, setting Ears down and letting her hop slowly from room to room. She was good during the day as they travelled, but the closer her leg came to being healed, the more restive she became in the evenings, wanting to explore. Dean figured they could let her; if the leg didn’t heal completely straight and perfect - well, it was the end of the world. She’d still get fed, and she seemed happy enough, and that was all any of them could ask for.

When he cooked, that evening, Dean used the last of the vegetables that he had brought with them from the vegetable patch they’d come across. Opening some cupboards in the sleek, pale-wood kitchen of the magnificent house, he’d found himself confronted by silverware and crockery, and some spices in a spice rack, too. Settling Castiel in the lounge to play with Ears, Dean plated up their dinner onto white, decorated plates that were square-shaped, and set them out on the little kitchen table with the knives and forks on either side, and poured their water into sparkling-clean glasses.

There was a candle in one of the cupboards, just a simple one, never lit. Remembering another night in another house, when he’d chased away Castiel’s nightmares with a candlestick, Dean lit it and put it in the centre of the table.

“Order up!” he called, and Castiel came through to find Dean hovering beside the little scene that he’d created - one hand on the kitchen counter and one on his hip, and then both down by his sides, and then both back on his hips. He swallowed.

“Is this… a date?” Castiel said, and he didn’t say it as though it would be a bad thing - no judgement in his tone, even though they were the only two people alive in the world for all they knew, and it was undoubtedly absurd for them to be eating a candlelit dinner together and calling it a _date_.

“Yes,” Dean said, having come this far. “If you want it to be.”

Castiel didn’t smile, but his eyes were bright. He said,

“I want it to be.”

Dean didn’t know what to do with his hands, again.

“Ah. Good. Good,” he said.

When Castiel went to sit down, Dean pulled out his chair for him. And they talked about things - not much, the usual little disagreements about something from the old world, and reminiscing, and planning their next move. When the food was all gone, Castiel said,

“Thank you for setting this up, Dean.”

Refusing to blush, Dean said gruffly,

“Any time. Except, you know, when we’re getting chased by a horde of dead guys, or something.”

Castiel smiled, his lips twisting to one side. In the candlelight, he looked beautiful - Dean could think of no other way to describe it. He wanted to kiss him again, so badly. They’d kissed a few times since the night of the fire - but it wasn’t enough, never enough, the moment always stolen by some new danger.

“Can I ask you something?” Castiel said.

“Sure.”

Castiel didn’t meet Dean’s eyes, fidgeting with his glass, running his finger round the rim.

“If we’d met,” he said, “when the world was - you know, before. Do you think…?”

Dean stared at him.

“Do I think we’d still be on a date?” Dean said, and after a moment, Castiel nodded his head abruptly.

“It depends,” Dean said.

“On what?”

“On if you’d have said yes when I asked you out.”

Dean wasn’t sure how his chair ended up pushed back, and how Castiel ended up on his lap, one hand pressed to Dean’s cheek and the other on his shoulder. It happened slowly, but all he could focus on was Castiel’s face - and when Castiel kissed him, everything else was gone.

There was no candlelit table. There was no kitchen. There was no broken world outside the door.

There was only the sensation of Castiel’s lips on his own, moving. The feeling of resting his hands on Castiel’s hips, holding him steady; the little intake of air that he took when Castiel’s lips fell open and the kiss became deeper and more urgent. The brush of fingertips became a press, and hold. Dean’s skin was on fire everywhere Castiel touched him, sparks living inside him and rising up, a heat growing as Castiel hung on tighter and kissed him harder. Dean’s hands slid up, pushed at the shoulders of Castiel’s jacket, and Castiel let it fall to the floor.

Without it, there was only Castiel’s t-shirt, riding up his back. Dean let his hands drift over the skin just above Castiel’s jeans, not wanting to move too fast; Castiel arched into the touch, breaking their kiss to tilt his head back. Dean pressed his lips to Castiel’s neck, and Castiel held Dean’s head in his hands, and - slowly, with a low breath out - rolled his body against Dean’s.

“Cas -”

“Upstairs?” Castiel said, his voice a little hoarse.

They kissed up the stairs, Dean shedding his jacket and shoes as he went, carrying the candle in one hand. In the bedroom - a wide room, with a king-size bed covered in soft cotton sheets - Castiel went to take off his own shoes as Dean set the candle down on a side table, lighting up the place with a coppery, flickering glow. Dean, however, stopped him with a hand.

“Let me,” he said.

First, he slid his hands under Castiel’s shirt - _Normal People Scare Me!_ \- lifting it up; carefully, he pulled it over Castiel’s head, and tossed it to one side.

Keeping his eyes on Castiel’s, without hurrying, Dean bent down.

He unlaced Castiel’s boots, and realised his fingers were shaking - the rush of touch, so much of it, so freely given, was rocking him. He was _here._ Doing this. With Castiel. It seemed impossible, and yet the presence of Castiel was so solid, so certain.

He slid the shoes off Castiel’s feet, and then his socks. And then he looked up at Castiel, who was watching him quietly, and he placed his hands on Castiel’s thighs.

They were thick and strong under his fingers. He squeezed, and Castiel breathed in - and then he let his hands press higher, travelling up Castiel’s body, converging at the top of his jeans in the centre. He looked up; on his knees before Castiel, he asked,

“Can I?”

And without hesitation, Castiel said,

“Yes.”

His fingers were still shaking, unmistakably, but Dean undid the jeans, and pulled them down - along with Castiel’s underwear - in one smooth movement.

Naked, Castiel stood before Dean. And Dean whispered,

“Can I?”

And Castiel said,

“Yes.”

With care, with reverence, with obvious desire, Dean took Castiel into his mouth.

Giving a groan, Castiel shifted, his legs half-bending with sudden looseness at the sensation of it; he regained his balance, pushing his hand into Dean’s hair, and letting out shaky breaths, eyes closed. For a moment, Dean simply kept Castiel in his mouth, not moving, waiting for Castiel to be ready.

When Castiel opened his eyes and looked down at Dean, Dean started to move.

Just small, at first. Little movements, Dean letting the weight of Castiel rest on his tongue, keeping everything soft and warm. He closed his lips, and gently sucked in.

“Ohhh -”

Dean let the pressure go, and Castiel little noise of pleasure turned into a caught breath. Once more, twice more, three times more - Dean kept sucking, until Castiel’s breathing was hard, his grip on Dean’s hair tight.

“Dean - please -”

Dean moved, taking Castiel further in; lifting his tongue at the back of his mouth, he felt the tip of Castiel’s cock touch it, and Castiel’s toes curled into the carpet. Slowly at first, and then picking up the pace, Dean let the movement become rhythmic: forward, and back. Forward, and back. Forward, and back.

Castiel’s legs were trembling. He tilted his head back, and closed his eyes.

“Dean, I’m - it’s been so long, I’m not - I won’t last l-long,” he said, and the way he said it - through sharp breaths, as Dean kept the rhythm steady - had Dean humming low and rough, hard and so _happy,_ so happy to be able to give to Castiel like this.

“Dean -!”

The trembling in Castiel’s legs was only increasing; his legs were shaking so badly that Dean slowed, worried that he was going to fall over.

“I need - I have to -”

With gentle fingers, Castiel lifted Dean’s chin, pulled himself away, and went and sat down on the bed.

He sat with his legs spread, feet off the floor, leaning back, his hands braced against the mattress. In the candlelight, his body - strong, muscular, his arms and thighs thick and powerful - looked tanned and golden. His cock was flushed red, with a bead of wetness at the tip, which - as Dean watched - slowly dripped down his length.

He had his eyes on Dean, as solemn and intense and open as ever.

“Dean,” he said.

“Mmgh?” was the best that Dean could manage.

“Your shirt. Your jeans.” He raised an eyebrow, and there was the humour Dean knew. “They’re much too… on.”

Dean smiled - and the smile became a smirk when he reached for his shirt and Castiel reached for his own cock. In warm, wondering silence, Dean undressed.

He let his shirt graze his skin as he lifted it.

Castiel’s hand on his cock tightened.

He unzipped his jeans slowly.

Castiel’s hand began to move.

He turned round a little to slide his jeans and underwear down over his ass so that Castiel could see, arching his back.

Castiel’s movement stayed slow, but he let out a breath of awe as Dean stepped out of his jeans, and stood naked. Once, Dean might have felt vulnerable like this, exposed, uncomfortable; but with Castiel watching him like that, finding him so undeniably attractive, Dean felt - felt good.

He felt sexy. He felt real. He felt touchable.

Approaching the bed, he knelt, spreading his knees so that Castiel, looking down, would be able to see him - how hard Dean was for him. He wondered if Castiel could guess how long he’d wanted this.

Castiel shifted closer to the edge of the bed, putting himself within easy reach.

“Look at me,” he said.

Dean looked Castiel in the eyes, and swallowed him back down.

He wasted no time, now. No teasing. He set a pace and he kept to it. Castiel’s legs twitched and shook on either side of him, his toes curling and uncurling; the sounds he made were low and lovely, his eyes never leaving Dean’s face. Never - not once - in his life before had Dean felt so much as though it was _him,_ and specifically him, that was turning his partner on. Not a mouth, but _his_ mouth. Not the touch, but _his_ touch.

Castiel was fixed on him, passionate.

“Look at me,” he said, whenever Dean’s eyes closed. “Dean -”

When he came, his face creased; his head tilted back, and he moaned through it, wordless and rough. Dean took it, every last bit, and swallowed, the taste thick and heady and musky.

“Dean,” Castiel said.

He climbed on to the bed, and kissed Castiel. Hands roamed; without rush, without huge intent. The first time Castiel touched Dean’s cock, Dean forgot to kiss, forgot to breathe; he simply went still, his mouth falling open.

Castiel’s hand. On him. He was so achingly hard, their bodies pressed together. Just thinking about what they were doing brought him closer to the edge, and they weren’t even moving.

“Dean?” Castiel sounded concerned, taking his hands away; Dean reached up, and put a palm on Castiel’s cheek, and kissed him. Castiel allowed the kiss, but pulled away after a few moments, eyes searching Dean’s face. “Is everything OK?”

Dean didn’t know how to explain. “Yeah,” he said, with feeling. “I just. Everything is _so_ OK, right now.”

Castiel’s brow cleared at the sincerity in Dean’s voice. When he kissed Dean, this time, it was gentler. His hand reached, and found Dean again; with steadiness, and care - and kissing, with passion, with undeniable love - Castiel brought Dean closer and closer to the edge, Dean starting to pant into Castiel’s mouth as the feeling started to fill him; with every twist of Castiel’s hand, he let out a little huff, his hands curling around Castiel’s shoulders and pressing hard into the bare skin.

“Cas,” he said. “Oh, God - Cas - yes - Cas, God, yes -”

Castiel’s mouth was on his neck, on his chest. Castiel’s hands were on his skin. Castiel’s smell was everywhere, everywhere.

“I want you to come,” Castiel said. “I want you to come.”

And with his head falling forwards, eyes screwing shut, teeth gritting, Dean came. In a rush, the pleasure of it shooting through him as he cried out, he gripped the sheets in clenched hands. Castiel stroked him through the moment of his peak, until it became too much, and Dean huffed out a breath and put his own hand on Castiel’s to gently ask him to stop.

Dean rolled sideways; his muscles unwound, his head unwound, his whole world went soft from his mind to his body.

He breathed.

After an hour - or maybe a few seconds - he looked over to see Castiel putting a finger, shiny with transparent stickiness, into his own mouth.

It could have been dirty, but when Castiel did it, it was only beautiful. Dean leaned over and kissed him - without heat, now. With passion, though, still.

“I love you,” Dean said, because it was true, and he was an idiot. Castiel, though, didn’t roll his eyes or pull away.

“I love you, too,” he said gravely.

They slept not long after.


	15. Chapter 15

In the morning, Dean woke first. The morning light called him back from sleep, earlier than he normally woke. He didn’t mind so much, though. Looking over at Castiel, who was sleeping soundly, Dean thought that he really didn’t mind so much.

Castiel woke slowly, lazily, and he said,

“Hello, Dean.”

“Hey,” said Dean. He reached out a hand, and gently pressed it to Castiel’s cheek. “Sorry, what’s your name again? I forget…”

Castiel pushed his hand away, an exasperated smile on his face.

They spent several long minutes simply lying in each other’s arms, though, Dean pulling Castiel back in. There was something about it, the nakedness of it - somehow, Dean felt _more_ naked than the night before. Without clothes in the heat of the moment, when they were both burning for each other, that was one thing. But lying together, Castiel’s fingers tracing lines across his chest, Dean felt a new kind of naked.

His skin wasn’t aching. He was soft and golden and Castiel’s fingertips left lines of light wherever they drifted. Dean had shivers up his spine, little shudders of delight that soon became pleasure when Castiel began to use his mouth instead of his fingers.

It took them some time to leave the house.

When they did, they headed west, as always. Castiel was wearing a t-shirt that said _I’m With Stupid._

“This one was more amusing when I was alone,” Castiel admitted, but he wore it anyway.

The land was only becoming drier and harder. They walked side by side, their steps matching without either of them having to try. Every now and then, Dean reached out and brushed Castiel’s hand with his own; every time, Castiel opened his fingers like a flower, revealed the soft bloom of his palm for Dean to press against. They didn’t hold tight, or always - but they came back to it, whenever they wanted. Between them, everything was relaxed.

Ears sat peacefully in Castiel’s pack. Her long ears went up and down occasionally, but mostly she slept. Her leg seemed to be healing well.

When they saw a town on the horizon, Castiel turned to Dean and raised an eyebrow.

“So?” he said. “Are we going in?”

“We’re out of peaches again,” Dean said, a banality.

“And I need a new razor.”

“In we go, then,” Dean said, making a little mock-courteous gesture, inviting Castiel forwards. Castiel leaned over and kissed him, and then set out for the town.

“We should probably not do that,” Dean said.

“What?” Castiel’s question was sudden, sharp.

“You know, kiss right before we go into a dangerous situation. I’m just saying, in movies, that normally means one of us is gonna bite it. Or get bitten. You know, whatever.”

Castiel considered this.

“I want to kiss you, though,” he said matter-of-factly. “And whenever I kiss you is technically before we go into the next dangerous situation, anyway.”

“Well, I think it’s the intention behind it,” Dean said, trying desperately not to turn red at Castiel’s simple admission of liking to kiss him. He really should have been able to infer it - he _had_ inferred it - but it was something else to hear it out loud. “You know, like, it’s the goodbye kisses. Or the ‘just in case’ kisses. Those are killer.”

“So, we can still kiss, but it has to be for a different reason?”

“... yes?”

“I’ll just kiss you because I want to, then,” Castiel said. And that was that.

Their run into the town was simple enough - they quickly found some peaches, a new razor, and even a book of crossword puzzles for Castiel to do.

“I used to do these on my lunch break,” he said.

“Of course you did,” said Dean. Castiel threw him a look.

It was when they were just leaving town that they heard it - the faint, gutteral sound of a dead person, walking towards them. They saw it not long after - just beside a big car pile-up. Arms outstretched. Tattered jeans hanging off grey skin and bone legs. Castiel hefted his blade, but Dean put a hand on his arm.

“I can -”

“You don’t have to, though,” Dean said. “ _We_ don’t have to. We could leave it.”

Castiel turned to look at the dead person, stumbling towards them, coming closer. His eyes were full of pity, his jaw tight.

The person had no hair left; it was all gone. Their eyes were white and filmy.

Castiel slowly shook his head.

“Too far gone,” he said. “Not coming back. It’s - if it were me - I wouldn’t want to be left - like that.” He shook his head. “End it. It’s - better.”

Dean stepped forward, and faced the person. Once alive - once real, with hunger for food and water, with friends and a job and a family, maybe. A person who brushed their teeth. A person who had a favourite colour, probably, and a favourite movie. A person who might have danced to an old song on a gramophone. A person that the world had rotted away but left walking.

“I’m sorry,” Dean said, and he meant it. And he ended it.

The body of the person fell slowly - so slowly. Castiel was by Dean’s side as it collapsed to its knees, its shuffling gait stilled, its journey over. And as it sank to the floor, behind it, Dean saw something.

Castiel drew in a sharp breath.

There, some way behind where the person had been standing, was a billboard. The advertisement on it was in tattered pieces, ripped and baked away by the sun - but on top of it, in bright yellow letters, had been daubed a message.

A message written by human hands.

And the message read,

I’M ALIVE

Dean felt a thrill go through his whole body; he turned to Castiel, whose mouth had fallen open. Together, they walked up closer to the billboard, Dean’s heart beating furiously in his chest.

For a long while, they simply stared at it. Tall, unrelenting yellow letters, brash against the grey and brown of the weathered billboard they’d been scrawled on. It wouldn’t have been easy to get up there, Dean thought. The person who’d written it had to have thought it was important that they were alive, it had to be noteworthy, and that meant - could it mean - that it was recent? Recent enough for it to still be true?

The letters weren’t weathered enough for it to be old, Dean thought. There was a little sun damage, but not two years’ worth. Maybe a couple of months. He looked once more to Castiel, who looked back at him. They were thinking the same thing - Dean could see it in his eyes.

They weren’t the only two out here.

There were more people. There was someone else, at least. There was _hope._

The billboard had no arrow on it, no directions, no indication of where the person who’d written it might be found. It simply shouted its message, and that was all.

“What do we do?” Dean said. Castiel looked up at the message, and then back to him.

“I’m not lighting another fire,” he said. Dean snorted.

“No, I mean - do we stick around here, and look for who did this?”

Castiel couldn’t seem to stop staring at it, the blazing letters. Dean couldn’t blame him.

“I don’t think they’ll still be here,” Castiel said quietly. “I don’t know why. They might be. I just don’t think they are.”

Dean understood. Somewhere in his bones, he too felt as though the person would have moved on - this looked like a defiant cry, rather than a welcome mat. Not something that the author would ever come back to examine again - just a fuck-you to the universe, in passing. If Dean could recognise anything, at this point, it was one of those.

“We move on, then?”

“We move on,” Castiel agreed. “We still need to think about the car for crossing the desert.”

“We are _not_ taking a car.”

They bickered their way out from under the shadow of the billboard, trying to regain some normality; just before it went out of sight, though, they both found themselves turning back to look at it.

“I’m alive,” Dean said softly.

Castiel’s hand found his.

“So am I,” Castiel said.

They walked on. Not exactly happy, but happy enough to smile at each other.

This new world came with a complicated kind of happy, Dean thought, for the hundredth time. Came with loose ends. And so, so many losses. Came with unfairness, for certain. A lot of that.

But maybe, Dean thought, looking over at Castiel - maybe unfairness wasn’t always cruel. Maybe sometimes unfairness came in things that were unfairly good, as well as unfairly bad. Maybe, as much as it was unfair to be alive, it was unfair to find a billboard on it that said I’M ALIVE.

And maybe even before the world changed, things had been this way. Questions without answers. Unfairness without justice. Locks without keys and keys without locks. Stories with no endings - just beginnings that stopped, as they must.

Dean walked on, the road under his feet, and Castiel at his side, and their rabbit in a pack on Castiel’s shoulders. He walked on, his heart still beating and his lungs still drawing air and his eyes still watching the horizon for new reasons to hope or fear. The sun beat down on them, and they walked towards it, headed for the end of the day with no idea where it would take them.

And there were no answers. And there was no ending. How could there be?

And even still, it all - every last part of it - mattered, so much.

It was Dean’s overriding thought, as he reached out to take Castiel’s hand, and Castiel smiled at the touch:

This matters as much as anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you've enjoyed the fic. <3


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